S3E11 - The Lab Coaters (Self Realization Fellowship, pt2)

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Kayla: Okay, Chris.

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Chris: Okay, Kayla.

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Kayla: Here we are back with the second episode on the self realization fellowship in para Mahansa Yoganonda.

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Chris: Yeah. You left us with a cliffhanger again.

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Kayla: Last time I did leave you with a cliffhanger. But before we get to the bottom of that cliff, I have a question for you.

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Chris: Is that what happens after a cliffhanger? You fall.

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Kayla: You fall all the way to the bottom and you die?

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Chris: I thought you get pulled up from the cliff.

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Kayla: That makes more sense. Oh, I think that I prefer to live in your world than mine.

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Chris: Oh. All right.

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Kayla: I have a question for you. What is science?

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Chris: Come on.

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Kayla: Like, can you define it for. What is science?

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Chris: God, what does it have to do with the yoga thing?

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Kayla: Define.

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Chris: Define science. Science is a process by which we better our understanding of the world in a way that we are able to try to control for individual biases and anecdotal biases.

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Kayla: Damn.

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Chris: Correct.

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Kayla: Correct.

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Chris: Boom. Get dunked on science.

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Kayla: The end. Now we're gonna move on, chumps.

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Chris: That's it.

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Kayla: So, yeah, so the definition of science, when you google around a bit, it's a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.

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Chris: I mean, that's basically what I said.

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Kayla: That's literally what you said. I'm really proud of you.

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Chris: Shit. I am really smart.

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Kayla: You are.

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Chris: Fuck.

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Kayla: And like you also mentioned, those testable explanations and predictions are studied. I guess you didn't really mention this, but you insinuated they're studied via the scientific method, which can be summarized as observation undertaken with rigorous skepticism to avoid cognitive assumptions. Again, basically exactly what you said. I'm really proud of you.

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Chris: Yeah. I mean, you know, a lot of 25 cent words on that Wikipedia definition that you just threw at me. But whatever.

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Kayla: Maybe you or our listeners will remember from grade school the steps in the scientific method, I'm gonna tell you, don't guess what they are.

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Chris: I don't know if people remember. Cause people apparently don't remember the steps in Pemdas and the mathematical method.

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Kayla: Honestly, I don't wanna get into it.

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Chris: I don't either. Those threads are just absolute mind fucking.

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Kayla: There are Twitter arguments constantly about pemdas, the order of operations and mathematical equations, and it gets hairy out there, folks.

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Chris: There's discourse about the discourse now. There's tweets about the fact that those tweet threads keep cropping up and, like, people keep. A lot of people keep not understanding how to do basic mathematical sentences. It's kind of. And also that it's not what we're.

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Kayla: Here to talk about.

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Chris: But the disturbing part is the fact that people are so confidently wrong. That's the disturbing part. There's people that are like, it's definitely this, and it's like, you're insane. The world we live in, that is.

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Kayla: But going back to the scientific method, we can at least control for that. Here, the steps of that are. Start with an observation or question, research that area, formulate a hypothesis, test the hypothesis with an experiment, analyze the data, report conclusions.

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Chris: Throw it out if you don't like it.

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Kayla: Is that it? No. Oh, my God.

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Chris: Wow. Baited.

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Kayla: I definitely got baited right there. No, don't throw it out if you don't like it. If it says what you don't want it to say, too bad. You will often hear that tests are blind or double blind, a method which, again, seeks to further offset cognitive assumptions, biases, anything that might distort the data. You will also often hear that the reported results have been peer reviewed or they've been reproduced. Basically, the more a hypothesis gets put through the scientific ringer, the more we can understand it as being close to the truth. So, like, it's a high. It's a high standard of entry to call something a science, right?

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Chris: I would say so, yeah. Yeah.

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Kayla: So, generally, there. There are three understood branches of science. There are the natural sciences, which encompassed physics, biology, chemistry. There are the social sciences, like economics, anthropology, psychology, or there's astrology. Nope. Get out of here. And then there are the formal sciences. So think of, like, logic, math, computer science. This all relates to the topic at hand, I promise.

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Chris: Okay.

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Kayla: The topic, which, of course, is the self realization fellowship and its founder, Paramahansa Yogananda. I'm Kayla. I am a television writer.

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Chris: I'm Chris. I am a data scientist and game designer.

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Kayla: And this is the podcast culture. Just weird where we talk about cults or just weird.

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Chris: Yeah, this is the podcast where we talk about things that are not our expertise, that we just said. Hi, I do data science, and I'm gonna talk to you about cults.

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Kayla: I know about storytelling. It's good.

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Chris: I don't, as you can tell by my episodes.

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Kayla: So, obviously, we discussed Paramahansa Yogananda and the self realization fellowship at length in the previous episode. So if you haven't listened, please go back and do so. It will provide you with very necessary context, but we'll give a little. What is it? Before cliffhanger, we'll give a little recap so that you can know what exactly last time on yes, this is the last time. On so. The self Realization Fellowship is an organization founded in Los Angeles in 1920 to help spread the practice of kriya yoga. Its founder is Paramahansa Yogananda, an indian guru and yogi who had the practice of Kriya yoga passed down to him from the ancients via a system of gurus. And he was told from a young age he would be destined to bring yoga to the west.

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Kayla: After founding a yoga organization india, Yogananda came to America, where he taught for 30 odd years. Years which were sometimes plagued with scandals and racism, but years that were mostly marked by great success, the openings of dozens or hundreds of centers, bringing in of a ton of money, and widespread adoption of kriya yoga practices, especially by celebrities. In 1952, Yogananda died of heart failure while giving a speech at a dinner to the ambassador to India.

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Chris: Oh, that's right. He went out like a boss.

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Kayla: He went out like a boss. And it is said by his followers that he chose that moment to enter Mahasamadhi, a conscious leaving of the body practiced by particularly enlightened gurus. As mentioned last time, as we discuss yoga and Kriya yoga in this episode, we are largely talking about a style of meditation taught by the self realization fellowship and other organizations whose specific methods are proprietary and can only be learned via a guru disciple relationship, such as by giving SRF money and practicing with them.

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Chris: So last week, they gotta maintain those gardens, baby.

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Kayla: They were beautiful.

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Chris: And if you haven't seen, by the way, how beautiful they are, there's one way to do that.

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Kayla: What way is that, Chris, go to.

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Chris: Our Patreon and sign up.

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Kayla: Woo. We took a video, and it's very beautiful. If I do say so much, it's not bad.

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Chris: It's not bad.

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Kayla: So last week or last episode, we talked mostly about Yogananda's life and his journey to America, establishing the self realization fellowship here. And this week's episode is going to be a little bit different than that. I want to get into some of the weird tidbits I picked up as I was doing the research. The little things that either gave me pause or, you know, acted as a huge red flag. Made me squeamish, made me angry, made me go, holy shit, that's so cool. A lot of what we talked about before is the story that's sanctioned and told by SRF, the version of the story that was given to us by Yogananda himself in his extremely popular book, autobiography of a yogi.

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Kayla: We'll still be talking about some official information in the episode, things I learned from his book or from the SRF produced documentary awake the life of Yogananda. But we'll also be getting into some ancillary information, things I learned from listening to Ono, Ross and Carrie, their podcast in which they talked about self reliance.

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Chris: She just had her tonsils out.

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Kayla: Oh, that's good. I wonder if her voice will sound different on the podcast.

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Chris: I don't know. She, like, tweeted the whole process from start to finish. Well, not the ouch, not the operation.

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Kayla: I would hope, not the recovery. So we've got that. We've got things I learned from reading posts and forums on angelfire and a place called SRF walrus. You know, places that are dedicated to former disciples being able to air their grievances about SRF blogs, such as one called skeptic meditations, the cult Education Institute. In short, in this episode, we're getting into the good stuff.

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Chris: All right, I've been waiting. I've been waiting two weeks.

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Kayla: The first thing I want to talk about is Kriya yoga, or as Yogananda and SRF refers to it, the science of kriya yoga.

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Chris: Okay.

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Kayla: The word is hit extremely heavily in literature talking about Kriya yoga, whether it's literature by SRF and Yogananda or other kriya practitioners, it seems as if followers really try and set it apart from other types of yoga and meditation by referring to it as a science. It's not just spirituality, it's empirical.

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Chris: So why do you think they use that word? Like, when they use it, what do they mean? Do you think?

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Kayla: I don't want to answer that question yet.

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Chris: Okay.

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Kayla: Because I believe that question.

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Chris: That's not the catchphrase.

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Kayla: We'll get to that.

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Chris: There you go.

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Kayla: I believe that question will be answered as we go along because that's not as catchy. It's not as catchy.

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Chris: You can't put, I believe we will answer that question as we go along on a t shirt.

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Kayla: Well, I just feel like we'll get to. That means, like, in 25 minutes, we will get to the paragraph in which I say they use science. Because this is, whereas what I feel like we're doing with this episode today is as we go along, we will develop a greater and greater understanding as to why that word is used.

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Chris: All right, well, then let's revisit at the end and hopefully we will have a better understanding of the answer to that question.

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Kayla: Agreed. Now, we discussed last week that Kriya yoga is defined as the yoga of action. And it promises to bring the disciple into a higher level of consciousness through a specific yogic practice that involves breath work, mantras or chants and mudras or ritual gestures.

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Chris: Remember talking about those?

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Kayla: But the explanations as to how Kriya is a science go a lot deeper than that. From what I understand, the practice of Kriya yoga seeks to move the idea of enlightenment out of the metaphysical and into the physical, giving a physical explanation as to how one might be able to sharpen their consciousness and ascend. Kriya yoga claims that this is possible with the practice because it initiates a process which purifies the blood. It's really hard to wait.

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Chris: The blood.

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Kayla: The blood.

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Chris: The blood. Not them. Not the mind, the blood.

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Kayla: No, it's. That's what I mean when I say the physical. Like the process will purify the blood, and then that makes it easier for life force to interact with the brain and spine.

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Chris: Oh, okay.

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Kayla: Yeah, totally. Yeah.

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Chris: Yeah, that's fake. Yeah.

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Kayla: So here's some quotes from autobiography of a yogi Yogananda's book. Kriya yoga is a simple psychophysiological method by which the human blood is decarbonized and recharged with oxygen.

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Chris: Oh, can we apply that to the atmosphere?

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Kayla: Maybe if we meditate hard.

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Chris: Can we meditate at the atmosphere and solve global warming?

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Kayla: The atoms of this extra oxygen are transmuted into life currents to rejuvenate the brain and spinal centers. By stopping the accumulation of venous blood, the yogi is able to lessen or prevent the decay of tissues. The advanced yogi transmutes his cells into pure energy. Elijah, Jesus, Kabir and other prophets were past masters in the use of kriya, or a similar technique by which they caused their bodies to dematerialize at will. The kriya yogi mentally directs his life energy to revolve upward and downward around the six spinal centers. Medullary, cervical, dorsal, lumbar, sacral and coccygeal.

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Chris: Are those one to one with the chakras?

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Kayla: I think so. But he says they correspond to the twelve astral signs of the zodiac. The symbolic cosmic man. One half minute of revolution of energy around the sensitive spinal cord of man affects subtle progress in his evolution. That half minute of kriya equals one year of natural spiritual unfoldment.

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Chris: That's just science, Kayla.

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Kayla: Science. Science and technology is fun. You'll see. Are you meditating right now?

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Chris: What is that?

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Kayla: What did that, Shanti, what did that mean?

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Chris: I lost you. I don't have any idea. I'm used to hearing bullshit on this show. No offense to Korea yoga practitioners. I'm sure there's something happening.

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Kayla: I'm gonna be quoting heavily from autobiography of a yogi here for, like, the next little bit, and honestly, throughout the rest of the episode. But, like, I'm just gonna straight up read passages to you to, like, illustrate the point I'm trying to make here. But first, what do you think about the bit that I just. Those two bits that I just readdevelop?

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Chris: The transubstantiation bits?

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Kayla: Yeah. What do you think?

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Chris: I mean, I think that's, like, a rad superpower. I don't think it happens.

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Kayla: That's what I said in my script. Here's what I think. It sounds cool. It sounds cool as hell.

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Chris: Yeah, it does. It does. I don't know. So, like, what do you get from that? Like, is it just teleportation, or can you, like, turn invisible and steal from a bank and go into locker rooms? Or can you fly? Like, what's.

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Kayla: I don't.

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Chris: What's the power set?

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Kayla: No, I think a lot of different things.

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Chris: Okay.

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Kayla: I don't think. I think that it's assumed that if one is achieving the level of enlightenment in which you can transubstantiate or whatever you're not, then using it for worldly things like robbing a bank, you're flying around in pure consciousness. Sounds really cool.

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Chris: But if you rob a bank and then use it to fund a spiritual fellowship where you can pass enlightenment on to others, that doesn't feel worldly to me.

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Kayla: You know what? We will get to something similar to that later.

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Chris: Nice. So, I mean, if I can learn how to do this yoga and then become invisible. Fly, teleport, then I want to do that.

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Kayla: Well, then you have to pay dollar 90 to the self realization fellowship.

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Chris: That's it. That is well worth it for superpowers.

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Kayla: That's just to start learning. And then you keep going. I don't know what the financial.

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Chris: I would pay at least three times that for superpowers.

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Kayla: Just do it. Like, what's stopping you?

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Chris: Nothing. Cut the music here. I'm going.

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Kayla: We're out. We're gonna go fly. So, yeah, it sounds cool. And honestly, it's a really. I think it's a really great story to be told or to tell yourself to get into the proper mindset you might need when undertaking a yogic practice of this caliber. Like, I'm not a yogi. I've done yoga. I've done meditation, but I'm not a yogi. But that's what it feels like to me. Being told that this specific breath work technique will help rejuvenate my tissues will make me feel decayless. That's pretty powerful stuff, and that's absolutely the headspace that I want to be in if I'm trying to achieve some sort of spiritual enlightenment.

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Chris: Sure.

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Kayla: But to me, there's a major issue here. There are many claims that kriya yoga is a science. But instead of rigorous scientific methods applied to the claims, the title of science is bestowed upon it by believers and followers who explain to the benefits of yoga, of Kriya yoga in scientific terms, like decarbonize your blood oxygen, venous blood, spine centers, et cetera. But as far as I have been able to find, these claims were not and are not backed by an actual scientific process. They are not backed by actual science.

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Chris: By actual testing and peer review and all those correct trappings of actual science.

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Kayla: There has been no scientific method applied to the claims of Kriya yoga that have shown that the practice leads to spiritual evolution based on a blood purification process. So it makes me feel a little iffy about the word science being so heavily used to describe the practice of kriya yoga.

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Chris: Kayla, that should make you feel iffy.

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Kayla: Why?

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Chris: Because they're misappropriating that word.

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Kayla: Correct.

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Chris: Which is something we've seen before again and again on the show, and we will continue to want to ask you, is there, like, a word that we can use? Is there a word for this? That means, like, the appropriation of the rituals and trappings of science in order to legitimize things that are not actually part of the scientific process or body of knowledge.

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Kayla: I think it's pseudoscience.

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Chris: Yeah, but that. That's not what I'm talking about.

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Kayla: Like, pseudoscience is just, like, couching.

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Chris: This is bullshit stuff.

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Kayla: This is couching something in the. In the. The phrabology of science.

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Chris: Yeah, subtle difference. Yeah, it's. It's. It's the, like, putting on the lab coat, right. But not, you know, and saying, like, now I'm a scientist, and therefore this is science.

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Kayla: You know, that's what it feels like with Kri yoga. It feels like it's just people being like. I'm just saying it's a science, so therefore it's a science. And, like, that's just not really how it works. And I don't want to denigrate a spiritual modality, but I will denigrate this usage of science. It's not correct. It's not proper. It's not cool.

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Chris: Sorry. Maybe we can call it lab codism.

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Kayla: Lab code. Lab coding.

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Chris: Lab coding. Lab coding. I like lab coding.

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Kayla: I like lab coding.

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Chris: All right, you heard it here first. TM.

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Kayla: Let me continue to read you some passages from the chapter of Yogananda's book, autobiography of yogi. This chapter is titled the Science of Kriya Yoga. Where I'm going to begin reading it picks up right after the thing I just read earlier where I said Kriya. You know, a half minute of kriya equals one year of natural spiritual unfoldment, whatever that means.

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Chris: Okay? Yeah, I'm sure they did all the math there to figure out that ratio.

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Kayla: Try to stay with me here, okay? The astral system of a human being with 612 bipolarity, inner constellations revolving around the sun of the omniscient spiritual eye, is interrelated with the physical sun and the twelve zodiacal signs. All men are thus affected by an inner and an outer universe. The ancient rishis discovered that mans earthly and heavenly environment in twelve year cycles push him forward on his natural path. The scriptures aver that man requires a million years of normal, diseaseless evolution to perfect his human brain sufficiently to express cosmic consciousness. 1000 Kriya practiced in 8 hours gives the yogi in one day the equivalent of 1000 years of natural evolution. 365,000 years of evolution in one year. In three years. A kriya yogi can thus accomplish by intelligent self effort the same result which nature brings to pass in a million years.

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Kayla: The kriya shortcut, of course, can be taken only by deeply developed yogis. With the guidance of a guru, such yogis have carefully prepared their bodies and brains to receive the power created by intensive practice, the kriya beginner employs his yogic exercise only 14 to 28 times. Twice daily, a number of yogis achieve emancipation in six or twelve, or 24, or 48 years. A yogi who dies before achieving full realization carries with him the good karma of his past kriya effort in this new life. In his new life, he is harmoniously propelled toward his infinite goal. Thoughts so far?

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Chris: Okay, so at first I was not following you at all, correct. That being said, that wasn't really that much worse than like, hero thousand faces.

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Kayla: Yeah, that's true.

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Chris: If you've read that, it's.

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Kayla: It's Joseph Campbell. Shout out if you're listening.

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Chris: Yeah, the second thing is that this definitely sounds like the. I get why this guy was popular in America. If he's selling this like fast track to enlightenment.

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Kayla: That's literally what he's saying is like, oh, yeah. So, you know, the goal of life is to be, you know, ever striving towards enlightenment and, like, singular consciousness with God. And that can take many lifetimes. That can take a million years. That can take thousands of years. But with my simple kriya yoga system, you can shortcut that whole thing for.

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Chris: The low price of three installments in 1999.

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Kayla: Yeah. So I don't think it's necessarily bad to formulate some sort of spiritual system that gives you the sense of that you're progressing in the, in a more tangible way. I think that might allow more people to be able to practice something like yoga. If you say to the average american or westerner, like, oh, yeah, if you start meditating, in a million years, you'll be one with God. That person might never enter into a spiritual practice, but if you say it's possible you will become one with God in this lifetime, maybe that person meditates more. So I can give it a generous reading, but I can also just as easily give it a really not generous reading.

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Chris: Yeah. Counterpoint from a non yogi. What I think bothers me about that, and I agree, that does have its upsides, as you mentioned so eloquently. But to me, the downside is that it seems to put too much emphasis on the goal rather than the journey.

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Kayla: Yeah.

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Chris: Which I totally get, like, again, makes sense why it would be popular over here in North America.

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Kayla: Yeah, no, that's. I'm sorry. Sorry, I'm interrupting you. Is it okay?

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Chris: No, yeah, go ahead.

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Kayla: This is not something that I was going to talk about on this episode, but there's actually something that's observed in, I forget exactly what it's called, but there is a phenomenon that's observed, particularly in westerners who adopt a hindu spirituality or a buddhist spirituality. I think it's called, like, meditation sickness. And it's something that can happen to people who don't have quite a full understanding of, like, oh, this effort that I'm engaging in. Maybe it has a several lifetimes journey. Maybe I won't achieve oneness with everything in this lifetime. But as we've talked about, with a more american or western approach to life, you want it now, you want it more in the immediate. You want to feel like, I can get to this goal, I can achieve this. And so meditation sickness can be observed.

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Kayla: I think it's observed only in westerners who approach a meditation practice where it's like you basically make yourself sick from trying to meditate too hard. You give yourself headaches, you give yourself nausea, you give yourself wild. Sometimes it can get into hallucinations and it can get into real mental health, mental illness type territory.

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Chris: Interesting.

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Kayla: So I think that for you to make that observation, that this might appeal more towards an audience of you or me and our neighbors around us. I think you're right. It does come with some dangers it does come with some dangers of focusing too much on this goal of, like, I'm gonna totally be enlightened rather than.

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Chris: Right. Like, if I meditate, I get a prize at the end rather than, like, the journey of it. Yeah. Does that mean that I am enlightened? That I'm like a fully enlightened yogi and I don't need to do anything? Now, did I achieve the end goal? Am I.

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Kayla: No.

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Chris: Am I done? I'm not done.

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Kayla: No.

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Chris: All right, fine. Keep going.

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Kayla: The body of the average man is like a 50 watt lamp which cannot accommodate the billion watts of power roused by an excessive practice of kriya.

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Chris: Is this about the matrix?

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Kayla: Through gradual and regular increase of the simple and foolproof methods of Kriya, man's body becomes astrally transformed day by day, and is finally fitted to express the infinite potentials of cosmic energy. The first material active expression of spirit with a capital s, Kriya yoga has. I'm gonna read this in a certain voice because I can't help but read it in this way.

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Chris: Oh, God. You're not gonna do a racist accent?

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Kayla: No. God, no. No. I'm just gonna do a mad voice. Kriya yoga has nothing in common with the unscientific breathing exercises taught by a number of misguided zealots.

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Chris: Ew, zealots. Telling you to breathe. Those fuckers.

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Kayla: Their attempts to forcibly hold breath in the lungs is not only unnatural, but decidedly unpleasant. Crea, on the other hand, is accompanied from the very beginning by an accession of peace and by soothing sensations of regenerative effect in the spine.

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Chris: We don't even have to breathe.

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Kayla: Hold that.

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Chris: Wait, really? I swear I did not read your script ahead of time.

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Kayla: The ancient yogic technique converts the breath into mind. By spiritual advancement, one is able to cognize the breath. Is that a word?

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Chris: Cognize?

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Kayla: It is now to cognize the breath as an act of mind, a dream breath. I don't know what that means.

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Chris: That doesn't mean anything.

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Kayla: Then he goes, okay, I'm not gonna read this part. Then he goes on to talk about how, like, the relationship between the respiratory rate and the lifespan corresponds. Like, turtles only breathe four times a minute and they live to be 300 years. So breathe less and then maybe you'll get old. Get old?

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Chris: Okay. Actually, hold on, because there is a correspondence between the. Between metabolism, between the number of heartbeats, specifically, and how long. Like, people. Like, different.

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Kayla: Like a mouse has, like a million heartbeats and they die in a second.

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Chris: Yeah. Like, everything gets roughly the same number of heartbeats.

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Kayla: It's just how fast it goes on an average scale.

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Chris: Yeah. So if you're get. If you're doing like a million beats a minute, then you're only gonna live a few years. But, you know, elephants live longer because their heartbeats are slower.

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Kayla: But this is talking about breath. So he says the restless monkey breathes at the rate of 32 times a minute, in contrast to man's average of 18 times. The elephant tortoise, snake, and other animals noted for their longevity have a respiratory rate which is less than man's. The tortoise, for instance, may attain the age of 300 years and only breathes four times a minute.

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Chris: Wow. Four times a minute. They are very yogi'd, yes.

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Kayla: He goes on to talk about how sleep is like a natural meditative state. So kind of like kriya yoga is about achieving that state. In consciousness by Kriya, the outgoing life force is not wasted and abused in the senses, but constrained to reunite with subtler spinal energies by such reinforcement of life, the yogis body and brain cells are electrified with the spiritual elixir. Thus, he removes himself from studied observance of natural laws which can only take him by circuitous means as given by proper food, sunlight and harmonious thoughts to a million year goal. It needs twelve years of normal, healthful living to affect even slight perceptible change in brain structure. And a million solar returns are exacted to sufficiently refine the cerebral tenement for manifestations of cosmic consciousness.

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Chris: Is that all just a bunch of words to say you don't have to breathe?

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Kayla: Is that what I think it's saying? That, like. Or both science. This is a science. But then if you do it good enough, then you remove yourself from observation, which to me is anti science. And then, yeah, ultimately saying, like, maybe you don't need to eat and sleep and breathe and whatnot. But again, I ask you to hold that thought because we will get to it.

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Chris: NARRATOR. This was not science.

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Kayla: Back to the book again. I'm going to take on a mad voice introspection or quote. Sitting in the silence is an unscientific way of trying to force apart the mind and senses tied together by the life force.

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Chris: They just keep shitting on other forms of meditation and yoga.

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Kayla: Yes, I love it. The contemplative mind attempting to return to divinity is constantly dragged back toward the senses by the life currents. Kriya, controlling the mind directly through the life force is the easiest, most effective, and most scientific avenue of approach to the infinite. In contrast to the slow, uncertain bullock cart theological path to God, Korea may justly be called the airplane route. Also, were there airplanes in 19? I guess, yeah, there were. Obviously. I'm gonna cut that out.

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Chris: No, don't. You gotta keep that.

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Kayla: No.

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Chris: Well, you definitely put it in the airplane.

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Kayla: I forgot that he wrote this book in 1946 and not 1920.

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Chris: There were still airplanes. I don't know if those commercial airplanes.

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Kayla: I don't think you'd be referencing it in the same way he wrote it in 1946.

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Chris: Okay, yeah, that's way different. So this sounds to me like a late night infomercial for yoga.

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Kayla: You know what, I didn't really put that together while I was putting this together and. Yeah, it does. And I don't want to denigrate this person's writing.

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Chris: It's a hard sell, bro.

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Kayla: The comparison is absolutely there. And this is like the cell chapter again, this is the chapter that's called the Science of Kriya Yoga. So again, hard sell chapter. He talks about death doesn't really exist.

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Chris: Oh, okay. That's a good sales technique.

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Kayla: The life of an advanced Kriya yogi is influenced not by effects of past actions, but solely by directions from the soul, the devotees, solely from the soul. The devotee thus avoids the slow evolutionary monitors of egoistic actions, good and bad, of common life. Cumbrous and snail like to the eagle hearts. What did that mean? I don't understand.

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Chris: Snail like to the eagle hearts. I don't know. Do eagles eat snails?

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Kayla: I don't know, man. Okay, this is the last page of the chapter entitled the Science of Kriya yoga. Okay, so let me just read it to you. I know we're like basically just doing a reading of this book at this point. I promise we will get back to, like, actual analysis, but we're a reaction podcast. Now quote, the advanced yogi, and I ask you to hold your comment.

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Chris: Wow.

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Kayla: The advanced yogi, withholding all his mind will and feeling from false identification with bodily desires, uniting his mind with superconscious forces in the spinal shrines, thus lives in the world as God hath planned, not impelled by impulses from the past, nor by new witlessness of fresh human motivations. Such a yogi receives fulfillment of his supreme desire. Safe in the final haven of inexhaustibly blissful spirit, the yogi offers his labyrinthine human longings to a monotheistic bonfire dedicated to the unparalleled God. This is indeed the true yogic fire ceremony, in which all past and present desires are fuel consumed by love divine, the ultimate flame receives the sacrifice of all human madness. And man is pure of dross, his bones stripped of all desirous flesh, his karmic skeleton bleached in the antiseptic suns of wisdom. He is clean at last, inoffensive before man and maker.

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Kayla: Referring to yoga's sure and methodical efficacy, Lord Krishna praises the technological yogi in the following. The yogi is greater than body disciplining ascetics, greater even than the followers of the path of wisdom, jnana yoga, or of the path of action, karma yoga. Be thou, o disciples. Arjuna, a yogi.

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Chris: We're better than everyone.

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Kayla: Yeah, it just got really intense there. It got real intense with, like, monotheistic fires of human will, and it just.

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Chris: Got, yeah, there were a lot of very, like, hefty, like, mythos tropes getting thrown around there.

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Kayla: So before you react, I have a question for you.

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Chris: Huh.

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Kayla: How does this all make you feel about the heavy usage of the word science, the reliance on the trappings of empiricism, evidence and rational thinking when talking about this spiritual practice?

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Chris: I dont think that they have any trappings of empiricism.

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Kayla: How does it make you feel to know that with all of this discussion about the yogis ability to prevent the decay of tissues, to revitalize their life force, to extend their lives and purify their bodies, how does it make you feel to know that after Yogananda died in 1952, a story arose about his body not decomposing after death?

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Chris: I think that makes. Well, actually, I don't know. I was gonna say that makes total sense, because, like, of the mythology of all this, you don't die, you just transubstantiate. But then if you're gonna transubstantiate, it feels more like his body should have, like, disappeared rather than.

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Kayla: But the body is just like a physical vessel.

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Chris: That's what I mean.

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Kayla: Consciousness. The consciousness is who you really are. You still leave your body, you still leave the meat behind, but you go float off into the air.

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Chris: So the meat was just too pure to decay. Is that kind of.

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Kayla: Yeah, like, breathe too many times?

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Chris: Oh, what? No, if he breathed too many times, that would kill him.

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Kayla: He breathed not enough. He breathed very few times.

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Chris: Okay. Okay.

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Kayla: And made his body all pure and incorruptible.

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Chris: Okay, good job. I don't know.

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Kayla: We can move on to talk about that, but. Yeah. Is there any other reactions you have to this passage that I just read you or show you?

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Chris: Just that it was intense. I mean, it was intense. And they kept sort of like, disparaging other people practices, which. Fine, whatever. Everything's always the one true cure. The one, the one true way. Yeah, it does sound a little bit like when you're talking about all this, you know, medical purity stuff. It sounded like were starting to get adjacent to anti vax here. Now, like, I start to see why some of the anti vax tropes. Are the way they are.

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Kayla: We'll touch on a little bit more of that a little bit later.

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Chris: Okay.

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Kayla: There's a lot of. We'll get to that in this episode.

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Chris: All right. As long as we get the catchphrase in a few times, that's what's good. That's what the sponsors are paying us for.

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Kayla: Exactly. So Yogananda's body's incorruptibility after death is discussed in literature. It's like discussed stories, whatever. It's discussed a lot in the documentary the life of Yogananda, as well as in the book divine true stories of mysteries and miracles that change lives, by Dan Millman, also in various literature put out by Srf. In fact, Srfdev has a notarized letter from the forest Lawn mortuary director. Forest lawn is where Yogananda's body went after his death. And the letter states, the absence of any visual signs of decay offers the most extraordinary case in our experience. This state of perfect preservation of a body is, so far as we know from mortuary annals, an unparalleled one. Yogananda's body was apparently in a phenomenal state of immutability. No odor or decay emanated from his body at any time.

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Kayla: For these reasons, we state again that the case of Paramahansa Yogananda is unique in our experience.

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Chris: The mortuary said this.

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Kayla: SRF says that they have a notarized letter from the forest lawn mortuary director claiming these things.

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Chris: Okay, do they have this?

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Kayla: They have published a copy of a letter saying these things.

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Chris: Has the mortuary said? We didn't say that.

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Kayla: We'll get to that. Okay, so, okay, basically, his dead body exhibited incorruptibility, a state which is often claimed to be experienced by catholic saints, other holy people is often found in hindu gurus.

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Chris: I wonder why that's a trope.

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Kayla: And the foundation, I guess it's a purity thing, and it's also like a miracle. And I think it does do well to kind of, in the mythos world, bridge the gap between the body and the spiritual, the body and the spirit. The foundation for Yogananda's incrupability is very clearly like, the foundation is very clearly set in his own teachings. You become a good enough yogi, you'll overcome the gross limitations of the body. It's worth noting that eventually, even the forest lawn mortuary director admitted that the body did begin to show some corruptibility, starting with some decay on the nose. It is also worth noting that in that same letter about Yogananda's incorruptibility, the mortuary director also stated that his body had been embalmed 24 hours after death. So it wasn't like a fresh corpse refusing to decay.

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Kayla: It was an embalmed corpse, which changes things a little bit, in my opinion.

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Chris: Yeah.

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Kayla: It is also worth noting that in oh, no, Ross and Carrie. Carrie Poppy attempt to track down some confirmation on whether or not this actually happened, because the only real reporting on it came from this letter that SRF says that they have, and they're the ones in possession of it. And essentially, Carrie is unable to do that. Like, she calls the forest lawn mortuary and tries to confirm the veracity of the letter. And they refuse to even say whether or not this guy worked there ever, really? And obviously, this was a long time ago. This was 72 years ago. But they refused to even say, like, yeah, that mortuary director worked here. So we don't have evidence either way of whether this is real. We just kind of have this letter from someone to go off of.

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Chris: That's just science, Calum.

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Kayla: It feels strange.

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Chris: Science. I can just say. It's science.

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Kayla: It's science. Speaking of Yogananda's death, as we talked about last time, his followers assert that his physical life ended when he willingly chose to enter Mahasamadhi. And the evidence for this, again, evidence, quote, unquote, is that in the days before his death, he began telling, like, he began hinting to his followers that he would be gone from this world very soon. The official cause of death is heart failure. But again, referencing Ono, Ross and Kerry, they point out on their show that there is no toxicology report from Yogananda's death.

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Chris: Okay.

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Kayla: And they, you know, they posit some other possible explanations for what happened. So they believe, as skeptics, they believe it's potentially more likely that Yogananda killed himself, that he said, hey, I'm going to die. And then. And then took physical steps to make that happen, rather than, you know, willed it to happen. Like, either he took. He took some sort of suicide agent that enacted itself during the speech to the indian ambassador, or he performed a trick that made it appear as if he was dead on the stage and then later ended his life after being taken away by his followers.

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Chris: Is there any evidence for that? Or is that just like.

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Kayla: No, those are just there speculations as skeptics, you know, what could be, what.

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Chris: Could be a physical alternative, physical reasons.

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Kayla: For this other than he. He spiritually left his body. He did, you know, psychic suicide, as it's sometimes called.

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Chris: Right.

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Kayla: What could be a physical reason for that?

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Chris: I mean, another skeptic's interpretation is just that, you know, if you say. If you're constantly saying, right, you know, I'm gonna die soon, right? And, you know, you say it for three months and it happens in three months, or it happens in seven months, you know, either way, or you feel.

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Kayla: Something really wrong in your body and you start saying. And then you die from it.

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Chris: Right? And then you say, oh, he just said yesterday that he was gonna die soon. Yeah, but he's been saying that for seven months and just so happened.

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Kayla: So there are potentially other reasons. I don't know what happened. I have some questions, particularly, I have some questions, because Yogananda has a history of attempting to prove he could do some of the incredible things he claimed in the passages we just read. So he claims things like, he could control his body and his life force to such a great degree that he could appear, quote unquote, dead.

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Chris: Okay.

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Kayla: For example, he is known to have claimed the ability to drastically reduce or stop his pulse and blood pressure. These abilities are supposed to be proof of his claims about the powers of Kriya yoga. Like, oh, I can Kriya yoga so hard I can stop my bodily processes.

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Chris: Any medical confirmation about that or just a claim?

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Kayla: No. As Ohno Ross and Carrie point out, stopping your pulse and blood pressure is a pretty well known charlatan trick.

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Chris: Mmm. Right.

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Kayla: The way someone can do this is, you know, if you do this, you can stick, like, a ball or an object under the armpit of the arm that you're going to have tested, and you can, like, squeeze it really tight, and that will cut off the circulation to that arm and then result in the desired readings.

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Chris: Oh, there is. I didn't know that's how it was done.

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Kayla: There's a very rational explanation for why somebody might be able to achieve that.

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Chris: Right. Rational and previously used. Like, it uses a lot. Yeah.

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Kayla: As far as I know, there's no proof that Yogananda employed these tricks, but he did make claims of stopping his pulse and blood pressure. And those claims could possibly have causes outside of his ability to manipulate his life force and exit his body at his own will.

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Chris: Right? I think, yeah. Right? Yeah.

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Kayla: The claims over the yogic ability to stop one's pulse are further examined in a blog called skeptic Meditations, run by a person who identifies as Scott. And Scott says they were a monk in the SRF's monastic order for 14 years before leaving to become a skeptic, writer and blogger. In a post titled investigating whether yogis can voluntarily control heartbeat, Scott examines lab test experiments studying yogis india. Yogananda's claims in particular, and non supernatural ways in which might one be able to stop the heartbeat, such as that trick.

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Chris: It's interesting. Even me as a mega skeptic, I've so internalized the idea that a yogi can, you know, have so much control over their body that, like, even now I'm a little bit surprised. Even now I'm a little bit like, oh, they can't actually control their pulse.

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Kayla: I'm not saying that you cannot employ breathing techniques or relaxation techniques to alter readings on a blood pressure. A blood pressure machine.

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Chris: But you can't eliminate.

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Kayla: You cannot stop. You can't stop your heart.

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Chris: Right?

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Kayla: You can't, like, that's not a thing. First, Scott breaks down a study described in the article, experiments india on voluntary control of the heart and pulse, published in Circulation, the Journal of the American Heart association. Using eegs to record respiration, skin temperature, electrical, skin conductance, and finger blood volume changes. Four yogis with claims about the ability to stop or slow the heart were tested in a lab setting. Three of the subjects utilized yogic pranayamas, or breathing techniques, kind of like breathing techniques that are used in kriya yoga. And they were able to weaken their pulse, but again, it did not disappear.

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Chris: Right. Okay, so it's true that you are able to control your pulse and maybe even your blood pressure within some parameters, but you certainly are not able to stop.

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Kayla: You're not stopping it. Like the fourth subject, they understood a little bit less. He utilized unknown mechanisms of muscle control and was observed to be able to slow his heart to a greater degree where, like, they could count 3 seconds, where his heart did not beat. But again, the claims coming from Yogananda is more like, I can just stop my heart. I can just make my blood pressure stop. I don't have to. Like, I am so super conscious that my body doesn't need to work.

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Chris: Right.

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Kayla: There's not really evidence of that. Based on these experiments, the researchers found that, you know, these four subjects did not voluntarily start and stop their heart muscle. Instead, it had to do with the tensing and releasing of abdominal or thorax muscles that were, they would use those to restrict blood flow, to slow the heart rate. So the claims were less than what they appeared to be and could be explained by physical actions rather than supernatural actions.

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Chris: Gotcha.

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Kayla: Yogananda also had a very specific heart stopping claim. He said that yogis should be able to stop and start the heartbeat at will. Yogis who know how to operate the switch of the heart and to control their heartbeats, can quit the body quickly and at will or stay in it as long as they wish. Only those who have practiced the control of the heartbeat and who have learned to live without oxygen, by eating less carbonizing food, and by preventing the decay of tissues in the body through definite yoga training and meditation, can experience death at will. If one can learn to control the heartbeat, he can experience conscious death, as did St. Paul. I die daily. And many yogis of India who have practiced this concentration technique and through it achieved mastery over the action of the heart.

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Kayla: Only advanced souls who can live without breathing or heartbeat are consciously aware. These are all separate like bits from his teachings. Only advanced souls who can live without breathing or heartbeat are consciously aware of the true state of death in which the breath and heartbeat also stop. Please practice these two states of sensorimotor samadhi with heartbeat and sensory motor relaxation. Samadhi without heartbeat. And you will know this universe as God's cosmic cinema house.

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Chris: I will not stop my heartbeat for your dumb yoga.

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Kayla: Don't call it dumb.

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Chris: Sorry for your stupid yoga.

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Kayla: But again, there is no evidence that Yogananda ever had these claims tested outside of having his followers check his pulse upon his command. Given that other yogis were unable to clear these claims in a scientific setting, it calls into question Yogananda's ability to do so. And then Scott's blog post continues to show a number of illusionists who achieve this heart stopping state through tricks and magic.

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Chris: Is just like a David Blaine thing.

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Kayla: Yeah, like illusionists. Not David Blaine specifically. He could probably do it, but yeah, various illusionists. Oh, no. Ross and Carrie make a very good point here. Specifically about these claims and Yoganonda showcasing his ability to stop his pulse. It's things like that for me, can make a leader potentially cross over from the true believer to the charlatan or grifter, as they point out in their podcast, being super spiritually into yoga and writing books about the powers and abilities, meditation and thinking you've achieved some sort of enlightenment like that feels like it could come from someone who truly believes in what they're selling. But once you start getting into the territory of potentially performing parlor tricks and saying that they're miracles, that's grifter territory. That's the stuff that would make the amazing Randy's blood boil, right?

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Chris: Yeah. I think it's totally fine to be into spiritualism and there's a spiritual component to our existence that I think is important. But yeah, when you're possibly sticking a rubber ball in your armpit to try to trick people into thinking that you have superpowers, then that's a whole different kind of worms.

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Kayla: The way that Carrie puts it on their show is if you pull that trick, you know you're pulling that trick.

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Chris: Right.

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Kayla: You can accidentally cold read someone, you can't accidentally make your blood pressure drop.

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Chris: Right, right.

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Kayla: But it's not just pulse and blood pressure. Yogananda and Kriya yoga claims to be able to defy or eliminate. According to his teachings, autobiography of a yogi, and larger kriya yoga practices, there are quite a few things a practicing yogi can forego if they work on their enlightenment. Enough.

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Chris: Okay.

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Kayla: With enough work, we can learn to eliminate the need for sleep, for food.

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Chris: Oh, nice.

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Kayla: And for breathing itself.

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Chris: There it is. Okay. That'd be great, because then I could just like, play video games all night. I wouldn't have to actually wait. No, I don't want to eliminate my need for food. I like food.

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Kayla: I know. That's the thing. It's like I like the things that make this life worth living.

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Chris: Now that I think about it, sometimes I like sleep too, you know? Yeah, I guess I didn't need it, but I don't know.

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Kayla: So I'm going to read to you a passage from the book again. And this is from a chapter titled the Sleepless Saint. And so this, what I'm reading right now is Yogananda is directly quoting a saint who is referring to as the sleepless saint. So the words I'm about to read are supposedly the sleepless saint's words.

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Chris: Okay.

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Kayla: For 20 years, I occupied a secret grotto, meditating 18 hours a day. Then I moved to a more accessible cave and remained there for 25 years, entering the Yogi union for 20 hours daily. I did not need sleep, for I was with God. My body was more rested in the complete calmness of the super consciousness than it could be by the partial peace of the ordinary subconscious state. The muscles relax during sleep, but the heart, lungs and circulatory system are constantly at work. They get no rest. In super consciousness, the internal organs remain in a state of suspended animation, electrified by the cosmic energy. By such means, I have found it unnecessary to sleep for years. The time will come when you too will dispense with sleep.

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Chris: No, it won't.

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Kayla: That's how it be. So. Yeah. What do you think about that?

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Chris: I don't think. I'm not gonna sleep.

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Kayla: What if you didn't need to sleep?

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Chris: I'm not even sure this guy didn't sleep.

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Kayla: I don't know. I don't know. I guess it's probably he did.

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Chris: Possible.

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Kayla: I did read a story when I was a young child about a woman who like, one day she yawned weird. And then she never slept again. It's the most horrifying thing. I like this most horrifying story I ever read. I don't think this is the same thing, but I want to sleep.

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Chris: I'm just saying that, yeah, it's possible that there's maybe some really rare medical condition where you can't sleep, but then.

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Kayla: That would kill you.

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Chris: But yeah, then he wouldn't have been able to do it for 25 years. I don't think. I think he would have been dead.

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Kayla: This kind of talk about sleep, it comes up over and over again when you start reading about Yogananda. According to Yogananda, most of us are sleeping incorrectly. We are sleeping for far too long. If we are practicing kriya yoga correctly, we only need four to 6 hours of sleep per night, 6 hours maximum. Because when we meditate, we are achieving even greater benefits of sleep than from sleep itself. Kind of like how that one, the sleepless night was saying like, oh, yeah, when you're asleep, you're still doing stuff, but then when you really meditate, your whole body gets like a break.

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Chris: I bet this is really appealing to. I guess we've already talked about this. It's probably really appealing to like CEO's.

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Kayla: The Jeff Bezos of the world. I don't need to sleep. Jack Dorsey is definitely in the SRF, right? According to Yagananda, 1 hour of Kriya yoga meditation is worth several hours of traditional sleep. We also are all eating far too much. And when sufficiently enlightened, we can choose whether or not we want to eat, and we'll no longer have the physical need because we will be, quote, spiritually full.

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Chris: I choose eat.

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Kayla: Me too.

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Chris: Nachos.

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Kayla: Yeah. Those nachos are definitely spiritual. Enlightenment.

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Chris: Hell, yeah.

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Kayla: There's a lot of talk in autobiography of a yogi and other literature praising vegetarianism, but even that's not good enough as plants also have life energy and can feel pain and be harmed. Also, according to Yogananda, we eat thousands or more germs per day. So are we really vegetarians?

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Chris: That's awesome.

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Kayla: For what it's worth, many srffers are vegetarians, and the monastic order is also vegetarian by design. Some other srffers, they even go far in their diet so as to choose, like, a fruit first. Diet is that, you know, that can be considered to be the least harmful, because when you eat fruit, you're not killing the plant. You're eating. You know, the part that falls off the plant.

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Chris: Oh. Especially if you're only eating it after it falls off. Right.

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Kayla: When.

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Chris: Sorry, I just. I love the, like, that you're eating germs thing because it's, like.

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Kayla: Not a vegetarian, because a germ one in your mouth, it's.

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Chris: Once again, we, like, we find that it's. People seem to not understand that, like, very different rules apply at different scales. Yeah, like, you're not eating germs. Germs just, like, live in, like, they live in your mouth, they live in your stomach, they live in your throat.

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Kayla: But you are probably eating, like, single celled articards. You probably eat. Stop. You're probably eating single celled organisms. Like, you've probably eaten a tardigrade.

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Chris: Mmm. Is that what you meant by Ardegarde?

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Kayla: Yeah.

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Chris: No, yeah, you're right. You probably are. Well, those aren't single celled, but whatever, tiny little baby. Yeah, you're probably eating. Those are probably going down your throat with food and dying in your stomach acid, for sure. I mean, that's what your stomach acid's.

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Kayla: For, killing tardigrade, specifically.

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Chris: I don't know if the stuff we eat typically contains a animals, though, or.

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Kayla: If it's a tardigrade's animal.

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Chris: I'm not sure we eat tardigrades. Tardigrades exist in, like, scummy pond water bears.

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Kayla: I don't know.

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Chris: Anyway, it's just to say that we, like, eat germs all the time feels like a weird.

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Kayla: It just kind of feels like if you're a vegetarian. And, like, you want to eat beef sometimes, but you feel real bad about it, so you're like, well, I'm not even. No one's really vegetarian because we all eat germs, so I can eat this delicious steak.

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Chris: Yeah, it's a. It's a different thing. It's like saying, I love the way that blue sounds. It's like, okay, I don't know about that.

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Kayla: It's slightly different. Oh, no. Ross and Carrie, they talk about visiting an SRF conference in LA in 2015. And, like, they brought their own food, their fruit. Their own fruit, because they were worried about bringing other food and, like, getting judged. And then, like, also they found that food was not provided at the event and, like, eating in general felt kind of, like, weirdly discouraged.

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Chris: Really?

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Kayla: Yeah.

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Chris: It's perfect for LA.

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Kayla: Yeah, I know. Also on the germ thing in the awake documentary, Yogananda talks about in one of his lectures that you do not need to be afraid of germs because balancing energy throughout the body with meditation electrifies it, keeping diseases from settling in. So what you were talking about earlier with maybe like a on ramp to some anti vax stuff here, that is a great, like, that's a great exit. That's a great freeway merge right onto.

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Chris: The anti vax highway.

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Kayla: If I just meditate enough, Covid can't get me.

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Chris: Right, because you're pure enough. And also germs can be good, and you're eating them anyway, you liar of a vegetarian.

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Kayla: Let's talk about the breathlessness. Maybe I don't know how we're gonna.

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Chris: Talk about it if we're not breathing. Can you. Can he. Can yogis talk without breathing somehow, magically?

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Kayla: No, because if you're meditating enough, then you're not gonna talk. Cause you're all super conscious.

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Chris: Oh, he talked with his guru guy just purely through the brain. Right? Like, he just, like, psychically talked.

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Kayla: They were just psychically chatting.

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Chris: Okay. I guess you don't need to breathe for that.

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Kayla: Maybe you've noticed, as we've read from autobiography of yogi, that there's a recurring theme of kriya yoga, allowing the practitioner to divorce themselves from physical bodily processes by tapping into consciousness or life force itself. Like the organs getting suspended in animation, the body shutting down its respiratory or digestive processes, like on and on.

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Chris: Well, specifically, what I've noticed is that it seems to offer you the ability to not have to do the things that you are compelled to do, usually to learn. Right. There's no, like, eat, sleep, breathe. If you meditate enough, you won't have to drive to vons to do grocery shop. There's no elective stuff that it's saying that you don't have to do. It's eat, sleep, breathe. It's the stuff that we are forced to do. Guess what? I'm going to free you from being forced to do that.

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Kayla: The state of breathlessness in Kriya yoga is particularly interesting to me, and it actually took me quite a bit of research until I encountered this particular topic and before I understood it as literal. So with Kriya yoga and with yogananda and Srfdev, they are literally talking about proper meditation, sending one into a state in which they cease breathing. Like, I don't mean you hold your breath or you temporarily die. I mean you meditate so hard and good that you no longer need to breathe in order to live. And in that meditative state, you are existing solely on life force, energy, divine consciousness, whatever you want to call it.

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Chris: And there's. And the SRF, like, still says that this is a true thing that can happen.

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Kayla: Literally. A tenant of Kriya yoga. Okay, this is what you're trying to achieve.

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Chris: You just said, like, I thought it was metaphor, and then it turns out it was literal.

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Kayla: Yeah, I thought that's like when you're.

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Chris: A catholic kid and they're like, this is the body of Christ. And you're like, oh, interesting metaphor there, bro. And they're like, no, this is literally the body of Christ. And you're like, ew.

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Kayla: It's very similar to that. It's very similar to that with me because thought it was symbolic. Soon learned it was literal. I found a 2010 frequently asked questions post on a website called ananda.org dot. Ananda is an organization that teaches yoganandas teachings separately from SRF, but well, get to that. The question reads, hi. I've seen more use of the phrase breathless state in kriya yoga than any other path. Common sense and most obvious experience tells one that oxygen is necessary to sustain life in breathless state. When one is not drawing any oxygen from outside, how does the body hold on for sustained longer duration for an experienced meditator? I've also read somewhere on Internet that hallucinations are related to lack of oxygen to the brain. I'm confused over this breathless state.

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Chris: Aren't we all?

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Kayla: In a refresh vinay from India, the answer is the breathless state is something that happens naturally as people have deeper experiences of meditation. It can happen for short periods, minutes, or much longer?

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Chris: No.

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Kayla: Paramahansa Yogananda said that when one goes into the highest state of samadhi, the breath and heart can both stop for a prolonged amount of time. Yes, common sense tends to take a deep breath when hearing such statements. Two things have helped me accept the idea. The first is my own short experiences of cessation of breathing while meditating. I've also spoken with many meditators who have had short and long periods of the breathless state. It happens naturally in deep meditation when the mind is very calm in the body. Still, it doesn't happen by simply holding the breath. The yogis teach that when the mind is completely still in the highest states of samadhi, there is no need for breath to supply oxygen to the body or brain.

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Kayla: This is why the breath tends to become very calm during a good meditation, even when it doesnt stop. There is great clarity of mind and inspiration during these times, as opposed to what people usually associate with holding the breath for too long, hallucinations and dizziness. It helped me accept the physiological possibility when I read different accounts of children who had fallen through the ice at frozen lakes. In one case, the child stayed underwater for 40 minutes. When they were revived, there was no brain damage or any other type of harm. The doctor speculated that because their bodies were so cold, they were in some sort of suspended animation similar to hibernation. Thus, their bodies didn't need oxygen for that time. So, yes, it is possible, theoretically and practically. Yet again, the yogi seemed to have uncommon sense in certain matters.

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Kayla: That answer was formulated by Nayaswamy Devarshi, ananda minister and Kriya yoga teacher.

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Chris: Okay, so for our listeners, don't do this. Don't not breathe.

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Kayla: Don't not breathe. It's okay to, like, get into a state where you're so calm that your breathing is just like, very slow, very.

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Chris: Relaxed and very slow.

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Kayla: Please continue to breathe.

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Chris: And also, as you know, a former swimmer, when I, you know, I could hold my. Clearly they were saying this was different, but I could hold my breath for like, a good, like three and a half minutes. That I think is fine.

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Kayla: That's a long time.

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Chris: Yeah. Well, you do a lot of breath control with something.

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Kayla: It's very impressive. But you can hold your breath for three minutes.

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Chris: Yeah.

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Kayla: That's bonkers.

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Chris: Yeah.

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Kayla: Yeah. Oh, my God. Are you, are you a guru?

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Chris: I think so, actually. I think I just didn't have the need to breathe for breath because I was so enlightened at the time.

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Kayla: Damn.

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Chris: But I don't think that. I don't think you can breathe for. Not breathe for 40 minutes and be like just totally cool.

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Kayla: I don't even think you have the.

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Chris: Ability to do that. Like, it's not.

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Kayla: There's no, like, your limbic system will.

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Chris: Just take over and be like, no, here you go, you're breathing.

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Kayla: There's a, there's no citation there. There's no like link to the story.

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Chris: Really, so you know, stuff to take her word for it on the Internet, I guess.

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Kayla: Scott from skeptic meditations also tackles this idea of achieving breathlessness during meditation. First, he notes that breathlessness is considered a form of samadhi, or total meditative absorption. There are four types of samadhi, which I did not know until doing the research for this. There is savikalpa, in which the meditator has reached an altered state of highest consciousness, but he is still bound to this time and physical body Nervikalpa, in which the meditator is in an altered state. So great he is beyond time in the physical body Mahasamadhi, which, as we talked about, is the consciousness choice to leave the body. And the fourth samadhi refers to a hindu funerary monument for a revered dead person. His blog post on this is titled no basis for yogi meditators claims of breathless and deathless state. And, well, he's right.

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Kayla: There is no scientific basis for this claim.

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Chris: Yeah, no shit.

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Kayla: During his research, he could not find a scientific study that observed this phenomenon and in fact could only find studies that refuted it. Like with the heartbeat stopping studies.

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Chris: Right? Can we for this episode use the top gun song take your breath away take my breath away for our outro music?

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Kayla: Yes, we'll probably get in trouble, but that's fine, whatever. Yogananda claimed that pranayama or yogic breathing exercises would help the meditator turn breathing into superconscious awareness, immortality, and communion with God. But this has not been proven by science. Even though kriya yoga is supposedly a science, Scott instead offers an alternative explanation for the experience of samadhi that meditators might flirting with brain damage.

417
00:59:08,130 --> 00:59:08,870
Chris: What?

418
00:59:09,410 --> 00:59:49,070
Kayla: While we don't scientifically know that meditation can bring us into a higher state of consciousness that divorces us from the needs of our physical bodies, we do know that cessation of breathing can cause some pretty serious problems for our physical bodies. Contrary to the anecdotal evidence in the Ananda post claiming that a kid was under the water for 40 minutes and turned out fine to our best knowledge, cutting off oxygen to the brain for extended periods will instead cause some crazy stuff to happen, like hypoxia or the physical effects of a lack of oxygen to the brain, symptoms of which include lightheadedness, numbness or tingling, confusion, disorientation, headaches, reduced consciousness, seizures, oh, and hallucinations.

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Chris: Once again, listeners don't do this. Not that we care about you, but we don't want to lose listeners.

420
00:59:54,378 --> 01:00:20,676
Kayla: No, we don't want to lose listeners. These are things that happen when your brain is hurting, but maybe they could also be confused for things that you might experience during a different level of consciousness if you didn't know what was physically happening to your brain. So maybe you're like, oh, I'm meditating so hard and reality is falling away. Could be. That could also be your brain desperately needing oxygen. If you're engaging in this breathless business.

421
01:00:20,868 --> 01:00:27,250
Chris: Yeah. Especially if you're being told that's something that you can and should do, you might be, like, trying to force it.

422
01:00:28,110 --> 01:00:50,792
Kayla: Scott also points out that along with the claims of being able to stop one's heart, if there are yogis who could achieve this breathless state, like, actually achieve a state where they're able to exist based on connection to consciousness alone and not our respiratory system, then it would make sense for one of these yogis to try and collect, I don't know, the James Randy million dollar challenge or Abraham Kuvor's 100,000 rupee challenge. All you need to do is produce.

423
01:00:50,816 --> 01:00:51,792
Chris: I didn't know there was another challenge.

424
01:00:51,816 --> 01:01:10,568
Kayla: There's another one that I learned from Scott's blog. All you need to do is produce these effects and fraud proof conditions, and then you have a lot of money to go towards your ashram or cause of choice, like you were talking about earlier. Of course, neither of these challenges have been claimed by anyone, let alone a Kriya yoga practitioner. Maybe they just don't want to do it. Maybe they just don't want to.

425
01:01:10,624 --> 01:01:12,576
Chris: It's not about the money, Kayla.

426
01:01:12,648 --> 01:01:23,452
Kayla: But I'm saying if you could. If you could have access to a million dollars, it's like you kind of should have. It feels like there's a moral obligation to be able to take that money and use it for a charity of your choice or to spread your word better.

427
01:01:23,516 --> 01:01:28,516
Chris: Kayla, it's about the spiritualness. Unless it's about the money, and then it's about the money.

428
01:01:28,548 --> 01:01:55,314
Kayla: Then it's about the money. These are still not the only miraculous claims promoted by Yogananda. As we mentioned in the last episode before he was a guru himself. He spent a lot of time india seeking out various saints, gurus, holy men, to learn more about the path to enlightenment, to find a guru for himself. One of the miraculous claims he documents in autobiography of a yogi goes like a yogi's body loses its grossness after use of certain pranayamas.

429
01:01:55,402 --> 01:01:56,370
Chris: Ew. Gross.

430
01:01:56,450 --> 01:02:08,154
Kayla: Then it will levitate or hop about like a leaping frog. Even saints who do not practice a formal yoga have been known to levitate during a state of intense devotion to God. This is in the chapter titled the levitating saint.

431
01:02:08,282 --> 01:02:09,298
Chris: Fake, fake.

432
01:02:09,354 --> 01:02:11,330
Kayla: So it's about a saint who was levitating.

433
01:02:11,450 --> 01:02:12,226
Chris: He was not.

434
01:02:12,338 --> 01:02:36,258
Kayla: So we go from, we've got the sleepless saint earlier. Now you've got the levitating saint. He also describes a saint who can read his mind. He describes a saint who has two bodies. Like, he's got two bodies, and he can transfer his consciousness back and forth between the bodies. Like, he shows that Yogananda shows up at his house, and the guy's like, oh, hey, there's another guy that needs to come here. Let me go talk to him. He transfers his consciousness to this other body over by the river and then tells the guy to come there.

435
01:02:36,354 --> 01:02:36,906
Chris: Whoa.

436
01:02:37,018 --> 01:02:43,692
Kayla: Same with two bodies. He met with a man who was known to fight and subdue tigers with his bare hands, which is cool as hell.

437
01:02:43,756 --> 01:02:44,508
Chris: Badass.

438
01:02:44,644 --> 01:02:49,276
Kayla: And a man known as the perfume saint, who could produce the smell of any flower on command.

439
01:02:49,428 --> 01:02:51,380
Chris: That's, like, almost just as badass.

440
01:02:51,460 --> 01:03:05,798
Kayla: It is pretty cool. Yeah. Again, this is a book written in 1946, describing the firsthand experiences Yogananda had around the year, like, 1900 india. Not exactly a lot of fact checking going on when it comes to these claims, Kayla.

441
01:03:05,924 --> 01:03:09,426
Chris: And why would you need to fact check the spiritual leader?

442
01:03:09,498 --> 01:03:10,630
Kayla: I feel like you should.

443
01:03:11,810 --> 01:03:14,434
Chris: I just. I don't like the doubt that's in your heart.

444
01:03:14,482 --> 01:03:16,746
Kayla: It just makes me feel like a shit ass person.

445
01:03:16,938 --> 01:03:17,610
Chris: Well, you are.

446
01:03:17,650 --> 01:03:35,396
Kayla: To know that, like, so many people have read this book and gone, wow. And then I'm sitting here going, like, that guy didn't fight tigers. Like, I don't know, some days it would just. It would be real nice to be the kind of person that could read this and, like, oh, cool.

447
01:03:35,548 --> 01:03:36,444
Chris: Yeah, but then.

448
01:03:36,572 --> 01:03:39,748
Kayla: But I. That's not me. And it also can cause a lot of bad things.

449
01:03:39,804 --> 01:03:43,700
Chris: Right? And then we might be on a podcast saying, like, you guys should try this thing. That'll cause brain damage.

450
01:03:43,740 --> 01:04:22,052
Kayla: No, you don't want that either. Not take a vaccine a lot of these claims that Yogananda observed or says he observed, they're claims that have a history of being debunked as magic tricks and illusions. When it comes to claims of levitation, there is a well known trick that's now often seen with street performers in which levitation is simulated via a special chair and walking stick contraption. The ability to produce scents on command is a long established magic trick, most popularly known as Aroma by Rakesh Siam. I don't want to spoil how it's done. Yeah, it's somewhat easy to do. You can google it or could I do it?

451
01:04:22,076 --> 01:04:23,380
Chris: Could that be like a party trick?

452
01:04:23,500 --> 01:04:38,030
Kayla: I mean, yeah, google it. Or you can listen to the Ross and Carrey episode about this, because she also explains how this is done. Honestly, when I did more research into SRF and Yogananda and his book and the teachings, I got really bummed out. And, like, I'm still kind of bummed out.

453
01:04:38,110 --> 01:04:51,446
Chris: I'm a little bummed out compared to last episode because last episode, it was like, oh, spiritual. I know this is a nice place with flowers and waterfalls and koi.

454
01:04:51,518 --> 01:05:09,578
Kayla: Well, the thing that bums me out is what we talked about. And, like, we talked about some really cool things last episode. Like, we talked about the ageless guru Babaji, who wanders the himalayas, giving knowledge. We talked about Yogananda's beloved dead guru, Sri Yukteswar, coming to him, like, resurrecting and being like, no, you must go to America with messages from the beyond.

455
01:05:09,674 --> 01:05:34,430
Chris: Yeah, well, and then he got here, and, like, his story here is. I mean, like, you don't need to talk about, like, being able to not breathe and, like, your story is pretty cool, dude. Like, right? You came to a foreign country. It was like, nothing. Always, like, friendly to outsiders and, like, you made a thing for yourself. And also, we just saw this video about how shitty it was to travel across country before the interstate highway system, which was when he was doing his traveling.

456
01:05:34,470 --> 01:05:34,790
Kayla: Right.

457
01:05:34,870 --> 01:05:47,350
Chris: The fact he was able to, like, go across country prior to having the interstate, very impressive. It's super impressive. So, yeah, I get the, like, well, aw, man, he sucks. Okay.

458
01:05:47,430 --> 01:06:15,746
Kayla: It makes those part, those specific stories, like, of Babaji, of Sriuk Tesswar, it makes those stories less special to me. Like, again, this is my own personal criticism. Like, not an objective interpretation, but knowing that, like, these kinds of miracles supposedly just can and do happen all the damn time when you start down the path of, like, meditating a little bit more. And it just. It makes me feel differently about the miracles that felt special in the last episode, and just this kind of went like, oh, they're all fake. Like, it's. I can't even be in the storytelling anymore because it's just, yeah, if some.

459
01:06:15,778 --> 01:06:18,670
Chris: Fucking NBC executive can do that, then who gives a shit?

460
01:06:19,250 --> 01:06:42,114
Kayla: I also want to point out here that when it comes to matters of the spiritual storytelling and mythos and symbolism are crucial. They're incredibly important. Like, for example, I don't believe that the stories of the Bible are intended to be interpreted literally, but the messaging around the miracles are intended to be symbols that strive for a higher level of communication than can be achieved in just, like, straight talk alone.

461
01:06:42,202 --> 01:07:07,874
Chris: Agreed. I mean, that's why I didn't. There was no pushback from me in our last episode because that felt like were talking about, like, mythological tropes and things that were not intended to be. Like, this literally happened to bob down the street yesterday, and you should stop breathing. It felt last time like, more. We were talking more, talking about mythology. And so that didn't feel. I didn't feel the need to say, like, did Babaji really exist 2000 years ago? Because that's not the point.

462
01:07:07,962 --> 01:07:33,916
Kayla: Right. It's like, last time it was kind of like, oh, the goal here is the same thing. It's like to discuss yoganandas experiences and claims and the goals of practicing yoga through this, like, symbolic, all this symbology so that I have a better understanding of it on this more spiritual, mythological level. But that reading gets so undercut by the labeling of Kriya yoga as a science and throwing around these science y words and pretending to be empirical and.

463
01:07:33,948 --> 01:07:40,268
Chris: Rational and doing the huckster tricks of, ooh, look at me. My blood pressure is like.

464
01:07:40,324 --> 01:07:46,844
Kayla: Like, if this is a science, quote, unquote, and its miracles are to be interpreted literally, that changes the way I interact with the stories.

465
01:07:47,012 --> 01:08:11,762
Chris: That's a really good point. That's a really good point. Yeah. Like, once you say, hey, this is a science. This is literal. This is part of the, like, rational way we should make observations and check our theories about the way the world works, then it's a totally different thing than, like, trying to examine, like, the spiritual, emotional, like, history, and, like, our.

466
01:08:11,826 --> 01:08:26,978
Kayla: Inner world, like, using symbolism to teach me a message on, like, a level greater than the literal. Great. Cool. I can totally get behind that. But then when you start, like, couching these easily falsifiable miracles in scientific terms.

467
01:08:27,073 --> 01:08:29,314
Chris: Right. It puts you in a different framework.

468
01:08:29,362 --> 01:09:04,892
Kayla: Yeah, I can't. Like, I can't get behind that. It makes me feel icky, and it makes me kind of angry, personally, a little mad. There's an entire chapter in autobiography of a yogi called the law of miracles that explains how or why miraculous things literally happen in our physical world. And it all starts to remind me of, like, the quantum flap doodle stuff we've encountered with Ramtha or any number of topics we've discussed on this podcast. Like, Yogananda takes some basic premises about physics and goes, this is why it proves the miracles of yoga. He gets into atoms.

469
01:09:04,956 --> 01:09:05,836
Chris: That makes me mad.

470
01:09:05,908 --> 01:09:07,720
Kayla: Yeah, I don't like it.

471
01:09:08,140 --> 01:09:09,960
Chris: I hate quantum flapdool.

472
01:09:10,300 --> 01:09:51,568
Kayla: I hate it. It's also not just the use of the word science or empiricism. Over and over in the book, he dedicates an entire chapter to esteemed indian scientist Jagadesh Chandra Bose, who is a pioneer in the field of radio and microwave optics and plant science. And he's a figure who paved the way for experimental science india. Like, he's a really big deal. Like, he's maybe considered more important than, like, Marconi when it comes to radio stuff, which is, like, that's a huge claim. And, of course, that chapter, it basically amounts to, oh, I met with JC Bose, and, like, I saw him present findings and talking to them, and, like, lo and behold, his findings totally support the idea that, like, a permeable boundary between physical and metaphysical, like, the same thing that I'm selling is totally supported by science.

473
01:09:51,764 --> 01:10:04,808
Kayla: That's what the chapter is. And obviously, I'm paraphrasing, and obviously, I'm very biased in my reading, but that's what it is. Sorry. And, like, it also pops up in. In the awake documentary that, again, SRF produced.

474
01:10:04,904 --> 01:10:05,248
Chris: Yeah.

475
01:10:05,304 --> 01:10:34,776
Kayla: And they do the thing that's. That we also see and what the bleep, where they have, like, these scientists with. With very praiseworthy credentials saying, like, sciency things and interviewing them alongside spiritualists and followers, and you kind of use that to show, oh, science. Science is on the side of our claims, and I can't say whether or not the people they interviewed were or were not on the side of their claims. I don't have the same view of that as they do for what the bleep, in which we know those scientists are misquoted.

476
01:10:34,808 --> 01:10:36,920
Chris: We spend a lot of time digging into what the bleep.

477
01:10:36,960 --> 01:10:52,014
Kayla: Yeah, but it's still. It's like, it's just using that. I'm gonna have. I'm gonna quote this monk next to this Harvard scientist and have them say the same thing it just. That's a specific documentary trick, for lack.

478
01:10:52,022 --> 01:10:53,010
Chris: Of a better word.

479
01:10:54,030 --> 01:11:08,534
Kayla: Still other times, in autobiography of yogi, it seems like we return over and over to, like, the God of the gaps thing, where it's like, well, even science doesn't have all the answers. Even though I'm, like, saying that this is all science. Like, even science doesn't have all the answers.

480
01:11:08,582 --> 01:11:11,250
Chris: Pro science or you pick a lane, man.

481
01:11:12,390 --> 01:11:44,550
Kayla: Let me read you some examples. Modern science has as yet no answer, though with the advent of the atomic bomb and the wonders of radar, the scope of the world mind has been abruptly enlarged. The word impossible is becoming less prominent in the scientific vocabulary. Next one. Physical science, then, cannot formulate laws outside of Maya, which is like, the mystical understanding of nature. Nature herself is Maya. Natural science must perforce deal with her. I can't even read half of these words. Inelecutable quiddity.

482
01:11:45,600 --> 01:11:46,576
Chris: Is that all one word?

483
01:11:46,648 --> 01:11:52,980
Kayla: No. Ineluctable quiddity.

484
01:11:53,320 --> 01:11:57,220
Chris: Oh, ineluctable quiddity. Okay. Yeah, that's that game they play at Hogwarts.

485
01:11:58,120 --> 01:12:24,532
Kayla: In her own domain, she is eternal and inexhaustible. Future scientists can do no more than probe one aspect after another of her varied infinitude. Science thus remains in a perpetual flux, unable to reach finality, fit indeed to formulate the laws of an already existing and functioning cosmos, but powerless to detect the law of framer and sol operator. The majestic manifestations of gravitation and electricity have become known. But what gravitation and electricity are, no mortal knoweth.

486
01:12:24,676 --> 01:12:28,060
Chris: Is that supposed to make me space out? Because I just totally spaced out?

487
01:12:28,100 --> 01:12:28,964
Kayla: That's fine.

488
01:12:29,132 --> 01:12:29,920
Chris: Okay.

489
01:12:30,940 --> 01:12:49,770
Kayla: On the epical theory of relativity have arisen the mathematical possibilities of exploring the ultimate atom. Great scientists are now boldly asserting not only that the atom is energy rather than matter, but that the atomic energy, is essentially mind stuff. What a single thought.

490
01:12:50,270 --> 01:12:51,374
Chris: What is this from?

491
01:12:51,502 --> 01:12:52,822
Kayla: This is from his book being like.

492
01:12:52,846 --> 01:12:53,726
Chris: Oh, this is from the book.

493
01:12:53,838 --> 01:12:57,046
Kayla: Science doesn't know everything, so therefore, it's Kriya yoga.

494
01:12:57,078 --> 01:13:06,246
Chris: But he's, like, moving fluidly between. Science doesn't know everything, and, like, here's a thing that science says that is, like, totally on our side, very fluidly.

495
01:13:06,318 --> 01:13:24,190
Kayla: Light velocity is a mathematical standard or constant, not because there is an absolute value in 186,000 miles a second, but because no material body whose mass increases with its velocity can ever attain the velocity of light. Stated another way, only a material body whose mass is infinite could equal the velocity of light.

496
01:13:25,010 --> 01:13:26,858
Chris: That's not. That's not true, though.

497
01:13:26,994 --> 01:13:30,770
Kayla: I just. Yogananda, he's like. He's trying a lot of scientists.

498
01:13:30,850 --> 01:13:33,538
Chris: Yeah, he's getting there. Like, he's got some things.

499
01:13:33,634 --> 01:13:38,468
Kayla: This conception brings us to the law of miracles. No, it doesn't. You see what I mean?

500
01:13:38,594 --> 01:13:39,672
Chris: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

501
01:13:39,776 --> 01:13:40,632
Kayla: Do you see what I mean in all this?

502
01:13:40,656 --> 01:13:41,936
Chris: I get it. I get it.

503
01:13:42,088 --> 01:14:22,890
Kayla: Okay. So this episode, honestly, like, clearly, it ended up being more about the claims made by Yogananda and Srf than, like, the inner workings of the organization, which is kind of the opposite order that I pictured. Like, when I set out to do this, I thought this will mostly be about talking about the hierarchy and, like, the admin and the bureaucracy, and, like, we'll do a little bit of talking about the weird stuff. No, it mostly was about the weird stuff. We're kind of nearing the end, maybe. But I can't really finish out this episode and this discussion about the self realization fellowship without at least touching on some of the bureaucracy and the resultant problematicness of yoga, Nanda and the SRF.

504
01:14:23,310 --> 01:14:51,048
Kayla: We won't be spending the same amount of time on this as we have on other aspects of the criticisms that we have just levied against Yogananda and the SRFdev. If we did that, we'd have 700 more episodes on our hands. So rather than deep diving, let's just provide an alternate view of the self realization fellowship than what it presents about itself. Because you can go on the Internet and you can read about it, and it's all very nice and good, but you can get into an underbelly. So let's talk about the underbelly, because the underbelly is always.

505
01:14:51,144 --> 01:14:52,336
Chris: That's my favorite part of the belly.

506
01:14:52,408 --> 01:14:59,078
Kayla: Soft and white. The soft white flesh of the underbelly.

507
01:14:59,094 --> 01:15:00,182
Chris: Is that racist? I don't know.

508
01:15:00,246 --> 01:15:08,810
Kayla: I don't know. I think when you refer to an underbelly as soft and white, you're indicating that it has less exposure to the sun. It's like it's protected.

509
01:15:09,670 --> 01:15:10,878
Chris: Weak ass white people.

510
01:15:10,934 --> 01:15:52,240
Kayla: Yeah, I mean, also that when you go to the self realization Fellowship website, the first sentence you read is a worldwide fellowship devoted to the discovery of peace, joy and prosperity in everyday life through community. With Goddesse. You delve into the website further, you get. SRF is a worldwide religious organization with international headquarters in Los Angeles. As expressed in the aims and ideals formulated by Parmahansa Yogananda, the society seeks to foster a spirit of greater understanding and goodwill among the diverse peoples and religions of our global family, and to help those of all cultures and nationalities to realize and express more fully in their lives the beauty, nobility and divinity of the human spirit.

511
01:15:52,740 --> 01:16:15,480
Kayla: And then finally, most SRF members are men and women with responsibilities to work and family who learn through the self realization teachings how to balance their active lives with meditation. In yoga, Nana's teachings, they find guidance for spiritualizing marriage and family life, creating success and prosperity in business and professional endeavors, and contributing in a meaningful and serviceable way to their community, nation and the world at large.

512
01:16:15,780 --> 01:16:16,724
Chris: This all sounds nice.

513
01:16:16,772 --> 01:16:17,612
Kayla: Sounds perfectly lovely.

514
01:16:17,676 --> 01:16:18,240
Chris: Yeah.

515
01:16:18,380 --> 01:16:23,000
Kayla: And I mean, like when we visited the Srf Lake shrine, again, felt perfectly lovely.

516
01:16:23,040 --> 01:16:27,656
Chris: It was quiet, there were birds run by volunteers, everyone to bring up the koi again.

517
01:16:27,728 --> 01:16:30,368
Kayla: Got the koi. We got like love bombing, right?

518
01:16:30,384 --> 01:16:32,216
Chris: When went, we got love bombed. That was nice.

519
01:16:32,288 --> 01:16:44,466
Kayla: Was relaxing, serene, supportive, beautiful. Let's keep going. Maybe one of our listeners decides to visit the lake shrine themselves. Maybe they then decide to pursue kriya yoga.

520
01:16:44,568 --> 01:16:51,934
Chris: Actually, one of our listeners did tell us that they have visited the lake shrine. One of our Patreon members said that they visited the lake shrine.

521
01:16:52,062 --> 01:17:03,438
Kayla: Maybe that Patreon patron decides to then pursue Kriya yoga themselves, taking the $90 SRF course and going further with their learning and taking the path to become initiated into Kriya yoga.

522
01:17:03,494 --> 01:17:07,530
Chris: Actually, if you just want to give us dollar 90, I can just tell you to not breathe. I can just do that.

523
01:17:07,830 --> 01:17:57,000
Kayla: Maybe they decide that they are ready to take the biggest step that they can and dedicate their life to SRF joining the monastic order. I honestly, I wouldn't blame you. The SRF makes it sound like a choice deal. Here's what it has to say about its monastic order. At the heart of self Realization Fellowship is a dedicated monastic order founded by Paramahansa Yogananda self Realization Fellowship. Monks and nuns serve the society's worldwide spiritual and humanitarian work in many capacities, from publishing the writings and recordings of Paramahansaji and his direct disciples, providing spiritual counsel and conducting temple services, retreats and lecture tours to maintain the buildings, meditation gardens and ashrams, overseeing the distribution of the SRF lessons and books, and fulfilling many administrative office and other duties required for carrying on the work of an international religious organization.

524
01:17:57,820 --> 01:18:27,610
Kayla: However, the principal calling of every self realization fellowship, monk and nun is to grow daily in pure love and longing for God, surrendering all lesser desires of the ego so that God becomes the all consuming reality of his or her existence every moment, every day, until final liberation in spirit is achieved through self discipline, introspection, devoted meditation, and a total giving of oneself in loving service, the monastic seeks to experience the deeper joys of the soul and the supreme love that only God can give and looks.

525
01:18:27,650 --> 01:18:29,070
Chris: Dope on a resume.

526
01:18:29,530 --> 01:18:32,466
Kayla: I don't know if you make a resume after that.

527
01:18:32,658 --> 01:18:38,872
Chris: If I didn't have a resume, that would be enough to start a resume and be like, yo, I'm a monastic order person.

528
01:18:38,976 --> 01:18:42,020
Kayla: Oh, monastic order person. That is. That's the official title.

529
01:18:42,320 --> 01:18:48,064
Chris: I am a monk of Carlson G. Monastic order person. XRF international religious something.

530
01:18:48,232 --> 01:19:34,840
Kayla: Or as Scott from skeptic meditations puts it, behind cloister walls were hundreds of monastics who vowed to live in perfect celibacy, simplicity, loyalty, and obedience. A spiritual utopia, a heaven on earth. So we thought every day for at least 4 hours, we practiced sacred rituals of prayers, chants, visualizations, affirmations, and, of course, silent meditation techniques. But the ashram monks didn't only sit all day, cross legged and cross eyed, chatting and navel gazing. The daily routine in the monastery ashram revolved around contemplative practices, but also how to live classes, nine to five jobs running the SRF worldwide organization. During the evenings and weekends, we had ashram duties, including cleaning and scrubbing. The monks quarters, toilets, showers, and kitchens mingled with ministerial clerical duties such as counseling or leading temple services for SRF members and the public.

531
01:19:35,380 --> 01:19:39,028
Kayla: Unfortunately, unlike trappist monks, we did not brew beer or ferment cheese.

532
01:19:39,124 --> 01:19:39,852
Chris: Boo. Boo.

533
01:19:39,916 --> 01:19:40,196
Kayla: They're very.

534
01:19:40,228 --> 01:19:41,692
Chris: Trappist monks make the best beer.

535
01:19:41,756 --> 01:19:58,230
Kayla: They're very anti alcohol in the SrF. It's like yogananda was very anti alcohol, and it's still like, no alcohol. For monetary allowance, each monk received $40 cash per month, room and board, healthcare, and all you can eat vegetarian buffet. Why would a monk leave such a paradise on earth?

536
01:19:58,690 --> 01:19:59,618
Chris: I don't know.

537
01:19:59,754 --> 01:20:05,018
Kayla: Well, I can think of a few reasons why someone might leave a paradise on earth like this.

538
01:20:05,114 --> 01:20:07,058
Chris: You, Kayla, can think, or is this Scott speaking?

539
01:20:07,114 --> 01:20:08,226
Kayla: This is me. This is me talking.

540
01:20:08,258 --> 01:20:08,714
Chris: Okay.

541
01:20:08,802 --> 01:20:13,930
Kayla: I ended with Scott. He said, why could you leave such a paradise? Okay, this is me going.

542
01:20:14,010 --> 01:20:14,378
Chris: Okay.

543
01:20:14,434 --> 01:20:14,762
Kayla: I can think.

544
01:20:14,786 --> 01:20:16,642
Chris: You're answering his question, just like you wanted.

545
01:20:16,706 --> 01:20:22,460
Kayla: Okay, first of all, shocker. Huge shock. Incoming.

546
01:20:22,620 --> 01:20:23,756
Chris: This is gonna be all rapey.

547
01:20:23,828 --> 01:20:41,372
Kayla: Paramahansa Yagananda may have been more human and more fallible than his teachings or the teachings of his organization tends to reveal a lot of what we're gonna be talking about right now is, like, based on rumors and hearsay, so we're not gonna get too deep into it, but there is enough on the table here that it gives me pause and think that we should talk about it.

548
01:20:41,436 --> 01:20:42,252
Chris: Okay.

549
01:20:42,436 --> 01:20:47,614
Kayla: First of all, Yogananda may not have been the pious renunciate he claimed himself to be.

550
01:20:47,692 --> 01:20:48,970
Chris: Mm. Okay.

551
01:20:49,050 --> 01:21:20,692
Kayla: As we discussed in the previous episode, Yogananda, as a monk, dedicated himself to a life of celibacy. It's part of what made the early accusations of SrF and Kriya yoga being a sex cult in the thirties seem kind of ridiculous. But to those of us who have seen other cults, there are rumors in the community of folks who consider themselves ex srfers, people who've left the organization or left the monastic order, that it is widely known in the group that Yogananda had a habit of trying to sleep with the women seeking to be initiated into SRF. It is.

552
01:21:20,756 --> 01:21:27,844
Chris: Wait, a man in power use that power to sexually assault people? That's so weird.

553
01:21:27,892 --> 01:21:40,980
Kayla: Look, it's really difficult here to tease out what is just going off of that, like, trope. What is the racism of the time? Racism of the thirties, of angry white husbands? I.

554
01:21:40,980 --> 01:21:41,644
Chris: Angry white women.

555
01:21:41,772 --> 01:22:29,260
Kayla: Yeah, be white husbands would learn that, like, a brown indian man had touched their wives to show how to do a yoga pose or a meditation. Like, do meditation correction. And went like, oh, this has got to be sexual. So it's hard to know what are rumors springing from that and what are actual claims. On one of the ExSrF message boards I found called SRF walrus or SRF blacklist. It has two names. Like, it went through a name change. There are a number of posts about claims concerning Yogananda's potential impropriety, potential sexual abuse, or just general stepping outside his vow of chastity. First, there is an entire sub board on the forum called Yogananda's sexual indiscretions for discussion on this topic. And there are 67 posts in this one. Another post, Mona Pratt, Yogananda's daughter.

556
01:22:29,720 --> 01:23:13,600
Kayla: It was a widespread rumor that the daughter of one of the SRF higher ups at the time of Yogananda's leadership was also his daughter. Okay, yoga on his Miami scandal. And that's about the scandal in which he was driven out of Miami in the thirties. Remember when he was doing that speaking tour in the south and he got driven out of a lot of places? There's some discussion over. Was this him being driven out because of how we talked about the british consulate being like, ooh, get this guy out of here. Or was it the police were like, we cannot protect you from all of these angry white husbands who think you're like sleeping with their wives. This one's titled the letter from the woman who wrote to Naroday, one of yoga's high up disciples, about Yogananda trying to seduce her.

557
01:23:14,260 --> 01:23:57,734
Kayla: The paternity suit from SrF walrus. There's a man named Ben Erskine who he. I don't think this is still ongoing. It was kind of in the news, like 20 years ago, but he was involved in litigation with Yogananda's estate over claims that he is Yogananda, Yoganda's illegitimate child. From one particular post on this topic, an ex Srfer makes some pretty serious claims. This post goes like, I don't know of a story of Yogananda raping a woman, forcing sex on her unwillingly. But his quote, bubble bath initiations of gauze clad women are all well known, even by today's liberal standards. That would be seen as a clerical figure abusing his authority by putting followers in sexually compromising positions. No pun intended. I don't know what pun intended.

558
01:23:57,742 --> 01:23:58,358
Chris: I don't know what the pun was.

559
01:23:58,374 --> 01:23:59,086
Kayla: I don't know what the pun is.

560
01:23:59,118 --> 01:24:00,526
Chris: But it's a bad pun.

561
01:24:00,678 --> 01:24:40,686
Kayla: Nerede's wife once drove a young woman from the top of Mount Washington to the bottom of the hill while she ran out crying because of what Yogananda wanted her to do with him. Another woman walked all the way down after a similar incident. Maybe to Yogananda, it was a purifying ritual. Heck, maybe it was even a well established tantric ritual from India with a tradition that went back millennia. But to those young women, it was, at best, inappropriate conduct with sexual overtones. Again, I do not have any evidence that any of these things happened outside of these speculations on this forum. I found it interesting that this was such a heavy topic of conversation amongst folks who'd been once very involved in the organization.

562
01:24:40,838 --> 01:25:01,850
Chris: Yeah, because I was going to ask, when you were talking about the angry racist husbands thing, if we had any stories from people inside or victims. The last quote that you read me sounds like it was more along those lines. I don't know if that ex member was themselves a victim, but it sounds like they had some stories, at least from the inside.

563
01:25:02,190 --> 01:25:10,718
Kayla: There's not going to be a lot of firsthand accounts, because, again, Yogananda died in 1952, right? So it's like it's not that long ago, but it.

564
01:25:10,734 --> 01:25:13,742
Chris: Is anything ongoing after his death?

565
01:25:13,846 --> 01:25:16,880
Kayla: Not that I know of. Not that I know of, no. I mean, again, he.

566
01:25:16,920 --> 01:25:19,536
Chris: Do they still have a charismatic leader? Or is it like, more difficult.

567
01:25:19,568 --> 01:25:32,056
Kayla: There's been a leadership. There was somebody that was in line after him, and then there's been successive leaderships, leaders since then. We'll get to that in a second. Okay. But, yeah, it's just this happened. He died 70 years ago.

568
01:25:32,168 --> 01:25:32,728
Chris: Right.

569
01:25:32,864 --> 01:25:54,450
Kayla: So any firsthand accounts are really difficult to find. So in some circles, Yogana just. He does not have the greatest reputation when it comes to the way he treated women sexually or the way he possibly treated the children he may have secretly fathered out of wedlock. And honestly, outside of SRF, there are claims that maybe Yoga Nandananda was just kind of like a jerk sometimes.

570
01:25:54,610 --> 01:25:55,362
Chris: Oh, really?

571
01:25:55,466 --> 01:26:09,992
Kayla: I know Ross and Carrie go into it way more in their episodes, but they talk about how Yogananda would put dunce caps on some of his disciples or speak down to his followers in a condescending manner, or just come off as kind of judgmental and holier than.

572
01:26:10,016 --> 01:26:17,288
Chris: Thou, which really the spiritual leader with thousands of followers that love him.

573
01:26:17,384 --> 01:26:39,616
Kayla: Probably the simplest interpretation here is that even with all of his spiritual growth, Yogananda still had some human in him. He was kind and warm at times to some people, cold and mean at other times to other people. He may have treated some people poorly and abusively, while at the same time helping many other people. It's hard to pin any one thing down, especially on a man who, again, died 70 years ago.

574
01:26:39,728 --> 01:26:43,540
Chris: Right. People are many different things.

575
01:26:44,000 --> 01:26:57,784
Kayla: So, okay, maybe Yogananda wasn't exactly the saint that he was made out to be. Is that really enough to disgruntle enough members that they would leave and form angry, bitter forums online to get together and criticize the organization endlessly?

576
01:26:57,912 --> 01:27:05,202
Chris: I don't know. Depends. I mean, I think if it's like, one person, probably not. If it's like two, probably nothing. But if it's ten or 20, I don't know, maybe.

577
01:27:05,266 --> 01:27:10,162
Kayla: Again, as Scott from skeptic meditations asks, why would a monk leave such a paradise on earth?

578
01:27:10,346 --> 01:27:11,602
Chris: Why would he?

579
01:27:11,746 --> 01:28:03,666
Kayla: Because it doesn't really sound like a paradise on earth. According to some of these. A lot of these people who've left, like, honestly, life as an SRF volunteer and or monk sounds exhausting and impossible. And it's an issue that, from what I understand, it's, like, gotten worse since Yogananda passed. So it's like, kind of an issue that's been going on, especially in the last, like, three years. There's a lot of discussion on various message boards that SRF has. I'll get to your question. In a second. That SRF has actually experienced a decline in recruits or a stagnation. Like they're losing as many people as they're gaining. And perhaps this is due to such things like, okay, let me read you a letter that was sent to Scott. Bye. By a woman who quit the SRF after 37 years. Okay, thank you for your website.

580
01:28:03,778 --> 01:28:08,230
Kayla: I used to be in SRF for 37 years. I realized that it is a cult.

581
01:28:08,890 --> 01:28:09,538
Chris: Oh, okay.

582
01:28:09,594 --> 01:28:40,670
Kayla: The end. Like all religions, I still like to meditate each morning, and I do biofeedback to help put myself into parasympathetic state before I start work. I think Yogananda was a very charismatic person. I no longer believe in gurus. I distrust organized religion. I used to go to convocation, the SRF conference, and could never get into the diamata worship. 1 second. She always seemed like an overly conservative, uptight person. I appreciate what you write about on your website and your way of thinking critically. Okay. Few things.

583
01:28:40,750 --> 01:28:41,326
Chris: Okay.

584
01:28:41,438 --> 01:28:50,984
Kayla: Convocation, like I said, is the yearly SRF conference. It is staffed mainly by volunteers from the monastic order. And it sounds terrible. So.

585
01:28:51,072 --> 01:28:52,984
Chris: Sounds terrible for an attendee or for.

586
01:28:53,032 --> 01:29:12,216
Kayla: No, for somebody who's working it. Yeah. So the way Scott describes it, because he was, again, he was a monk for 14 years. He says, quote, while I was a monk, I participated each year in the SRF convocations. The monastics and volunteer lay members worked 14 to 18 hours each day to run the event behind the curtain and at the Bonaventure Hotel.

587
01:29:12,368 --> 01:29:15,500
Chris: Man, that's video game industry QA hours there.

588
01:29:16,240 --> 01:29:59,270
Kayla: The first five years of my life in the SRF monastic order, I enthusiastically served at convocation in a labor of love. I tolerated the 18 hours work shifts at the Bonaventure Hotel. But by my 6th, 7th and 8th convocation, I found the event. The monastic speakers and the topics were monotonous and formulaic. How to meditate, finding God in daily life, keys to happiness, running to God, etcetera. And it's like, it's not. This is me talking now. It's not just the convocation. That sounds like grueling work. There is post after post on SRF walrus about the 18 hours, days spent to maintain the various SRF locations, particularly the headquarters in Mount Washington. And a lot of this seems to come from a time when a woman known as Dayamata was at the head of the SRF.

589
01:29:59,850 --> 01:30:04,498
Kayla: Dayamata became a direct disciple of Yogananda when she left the mormon church at 17.

590
01:30:04,674 --> 01:30:06,722
Chris: Oh, so she's a cult hopper?

591
01:30:06,866 --> 01:30:07,570
Kayla: Well, yeah, she.

592
01:30:07,610 --> 01:30:09,066
Chris: I mean, I think Mark Vicente over.

593
01:30:09,098 --> 01:30:15,168
Kayla: Here, I feel like. I think there's a lot of Mormons that left Mormonism to join SRF at the time.

594
01:30:15,224 --> 01:30:15,760
Chris: Oh, really?

595
01:30:15,840 --> 01:30:16,736
Kayla: That's interesting.

596
01:30:16,888 --> 01:30:22,048
Chris: Wait, but they said they're not like a religion, though. So why do you have to leave Mormonism to join SRF?

597
01:30:22,064 --> 01:30:50,190
Kayla: Well, you have to leave where you are to be this man's direct disciple. And that's what Dayama did at 17. She was chosen as the leader when the leader after Yogananda died. So it was like, Yogananda died, Samdhi was the leader for like, I think, less than a year, and then she was appointed the leader, and she was the leader of the self realization fellowship for 55 years. So longer than Yogananda himself.

598
01:30:50,690 --> 01:30:52,226
Chris: That's longer than most things.

599
01:30:52,298 --> 01:31:04,920
Kayla: Yeah. It's also worth noting that when she died, SrF was taken over by another direct disciple of Yogananda, who left Mormonism as a young teen to join. I think she was 14. I'm not sure what that means, but I found it interesting.

600
01:31:05,380 --> 01:31:08,080
Chris: A direct disciple means that she's damn old now, too.

601
01:31:08,620 --> 01:31:12,612
Kayla: Well, Dayamata's dead. I think she has also died as well.

602
01:31:12,676 --> 01:31:13,380
Chris: Okay.

603
01:31:13,540 --> 01:31:21,940
Kayla: And Diamata is presented as universally loved by the organization. And she was a leader for over five decades, so clearly something was working.

604
01:31:22,020 --> 01:31:24,556
Chris: She's shaped it. Yeah. At least as much, if more.

605
01:31:24,708 --> 01:31:51,590
Kayla: There are a number of disgruntled former members who left specifically because of her style of leadership. The sense that when she was the leader, there was like a lot of jockeying for position hierarchically within. There was. Who could get closest to Dayamata? Who's gonna be part of the inner circle? A lot of pressure. When she would visit an SRF location, it was expected that she would be weighted on hand and foot, that everything would be spotless, that it had to be perfect.

606
01:31:52,330 --> 01:31:55,098
Chris: I wanna be weighted on hand and foot. Why are we not starting a cult?

607
01:31:55,154 --> 01:31:55,826
Kayla: This is bullshit.

608
01:31:55,858 --> 01:31:57,390
Chris: We have this stupid podcast.

609
01:31:58,360 --> 01:32:09,688
Kayla: It seems like there are a number of criticisms that SRF shifted a bit in its purpose and maybe got a bit too false idol worshippy of Dayamata herself instead of sticking to the overall teachings of Yogananda.

610
01:32:09,744 --> 01:32:10,536
Chris: Never seen that before.

611
01:32:10,608 --> 01:32:29,166
Kayla: I know, right? In short, it sounds like while a lot of people the world over have experienced a beautiful thing due to their involvement with SRF, that's just. It's not the only side of the story, and there are plenty of criticisms to be made of. Please be sure to visit the linked SRF Walrus forum, if you want to learn more about those individual stories.

612
01:32:29,358 --> 01:32:35,430
Chris: Yeah, we put a bunch of stuff in our show notes, and we put a bunch of stuff in our instagram. So go check it out.

613
01:32:35,470 --> 01:32:45,470
Kayla: Go check it out. There are two more specific things that make me go, huh? Maybe this is why people might criticize or leave this group or leave this utopia that Scott described.

614
01:32:45,590 --> 01:32:46,350
Chris: Okay.

615
01:32:46,470 --> 01:33:00,928
Kayla: The first is that Yogananda was incredibly clear about something. What meditation is better for the world than undertaking the action of good works. The best thing that you can do for the world is to become a better meditator in the SRF tradition.

616
01:33:01,024 --> 01:33:02,608
Chris: So he was a yoga Protestant.

617
01:33:02,664 --> 01:33:18,298
Kayla: Yeah. It's not about helping people, not about doing good deeds. Meditation in the way that Yogananda teaches is the key. You know, maybe you remember from the previous episode when Yogananda joined summer enunciates as a young Mandev and found them too focused on acts of service and he left.

618
01:33:18,394 --> 01:33:20,042
Chris: Yeah. What a bunch of losers.

619
01:33:20,226 --> 01:33:26,498
Kayla: It feels like that. Or maybe you've heard the story of RuPaul that RuPaul has told.

620
01:33:26,634 --> 01:33:29,010
Chris: Wait. I know. Wait, what? RuPaul's in this?

621
01:33:29,050 --> 01:33:44,670
Kayla: RuPaul has a. There's a story that RuPaul told in which he saw a man drowning and went to call 911 and then went, no, the best thing I can do is pray. Holy shit. Rupaul.

622
01:33:46,790 --> 01:33:48,446
Chris: This is Rupaul. Drag race rupaul?

623
01:33:48,478 --> 01:33:53,838
Kayla: Yes, this is RuPaul. Drag race Rupaul. I'm not saying that RuPaul is a member of SRF, but, like, when I.

624
01:33:53,894 --> 01:33:55,102
Chris: Oh, wait, then what the hell is this?

625
01:33:55,166 --> 01:34:03,694
Kayla: It's just when I heard this thing about, like, oh, meditation is better than doing good works, I was like, oh, like RuPaul. Geez, it's like RuPaul also fracking.

626
01:34:03,742 --> 01:34:22,360
Chris: No, I mean, I guess. I guess there's part of me that get, like, if you are just so spiritual oriented, maybe there's, like, a part of you that really believes that's the case. You know, doing the good work is too earthly, whereas.

627
01:34:22,400 --> 01:34:26,496
Kayla: But you should call 911 if you see someone dying, maybe you should do both. Like, you can do both.

628
01:34:26,568 --> 01:34:27,984
Chris: You can call 911 and then also.

629
01:34:28,072 --> 01:34:54,828
Kayla: But also, like, you can also meditate and do good works. I mean, it's also, like. It's honestly, it is spelled out on their monastic order page on the SRF website of the various types of work the website outlines monks and nuns undertaking. Eight of the nine works relate directly back to just getting people to meditate in the Kriya yoga style. So it's like publishing Yogananda's writings, leading prayer circles, publishing the SRF magazine, operating retreats.

630
01:34:54,964 --> 01:35:06,920
Chris: Okay, so basically what's happening here is if you can't monetize it, if it's helping others in charity, then don't do it. But if you can monetize it and it's like, oh, pass for meditation, then you should do that.

631
01:35:06,960 --> 01:35:18,140
Kayla: That is certainly one reading because. Yeah. Just one bullet point on this list is dedicated to good works supporting various charitable relief and welfare activities around the world.

632
01:35:18,560 --> 01:35:20,096
Chris: Also, not saying don't do it.

633
01:35:20,128 --> 01:35:54,614
Kayla: No, but it's like, it's very. It's not the focus. The focus is spreading Yogananda's word, which, you know, given a generous reading, it's like, well, this is the thing that's going to save the world. This is the thing that's going to bring the most people peace. Or it's the thing that you said, get the word out there, get more money for the organization. And, like, I just. I can't help but wonder if some people drawn to a monastic lifestyle might eventually become disillusioned by a lifestyle so insular and avoidant of good works. Like, if you're the kind of person that wants to be a renunciate, you might also be the kind of person that is also drawn to doing to service of others in, like, a more actionable way.

634
01:35:54,662 --> 01:35:56,654
Chris: Sure. Right, right. Yeah.

635
01:35:56,822 --> 01:36:12,860
Kayla: Second thing that made me go, Turns out that while SRF says, yes, you can be any religion to join in practice, I have heard in some places, and I don't have anything specific thing to cite for you on this, because I did not join the monastic order.

636
01:36:13,280 --> 01:36:14,344
Chris: No, you should have.

637
01:36:14,432 --> 01:36:24,852
Kayla: But apparently it is a requirement in joining the monastic order that you sign a statement of belief which asserts that everything you need spiritually can be found within the self realization fellowship. So you're kind of.

638
01:36:24,956 --> 01:36:25,804
Chris: That's a weird thing.

639
01:36:25,852 --> 01:36:33,200
Kayla: You don't have to renounce your Catholicism, but you kind of have to say, like, I don't need my Catholicism. Everything I need is an SRF.

640
01:36:33,500 --> 01:36:50,884
Chris: Okay, so that's a weird thing to sign, full stop. And then also, that's a weird thing to sign when one of your initial sort of love bomb recruitment techniques is all religions are. This is totally orthogonal to the religion that you're doing. It's a different thing.

641
01:36:50,932 --> 01:36:52,036
Kayla: Feels like a bait and switch.

642
01:36:52,108 --> 01:36:52,578
Chris: Yeah.

643
01:36:52,684 --> 01:37:00,590
Kayla: And it's restrictive. And, like, considering that the monastic order has a history of accepting children as young as 14 into its ranks, I.

644
01:37:00,590 --> 01:37:01,342
Chris: Don'T know about that.

645
01:37:01,406 --> 01:37:06,398
Kayla: That, you know, that might be the kind of thing that gets signed and then doesn't necessarily age very well for the signer.

646
01:37:06,574 --> 01:37:09,766
Chris: That being said, I was baptized in the catholic church when I was, like, ancient.

647
01:37:09,798 --> 01:37:13,126
Kayla: You didn't have to, like, renounce anything or to sign it. You just were a baby.

648
01:37:13,158 --> 01:37:14,998
Chris: No, I just was dunked in the water.

649
01:37:15,134 --> 01:37:17,090
Kayla: Oh, no. I'm so sad for you.

650
01:37:17,950 --> 01:37:18,782
Chris: Fuck you.

651
01:37:18,886 --> 01:37:36,302
Kayla: Okay. We've talked a lot about the criticisms regarding the self realization fellowship and its founder, Paramahansa Yogananda. So maybe at this point, you're like, okay, I still want to practice Yogananda's teachings, but I don't want to get involved with this organization that I don't feel good about anymore.

652
01:37:36,406 --> 01:37:39,518
Chris: Sure, yeah, I want to do the stuff, but I don't want to be in the thing.

653
01:37:39,574 --> 01:37:42,490
Kayla: Well, never fear. Schisms are here.

654
01:37:43,630 --> 01:37:44,382
Chris: Thank God.

655
01:37:44,446 --> 01:38:12,374
Kayla: There are a handful of schisms when it comes to SRF. You know, we talked last episode about how Yogananda's friend and disciple, Dhirananda, initiated a schism in the 1930s when she was. And it shouldn't come as a surprise to learn that Kriya yoga now has a number of gurus that have brought its message to the world. There's other Kriya yoga gurus, but if you are a person that decides, hey, I do not like SRF, but I still want to learn Yogananda's teaching specifically. Okay, I have got a sect for you.

656
01:38:12,492 --> 01:38:13,910
Chris: I love sects.

657
01:38:14,690 --> 01:38:16,002
Kayla: This is just one sect.

658
01:38:16,106 --> 01:38:16,790
Chris: Oh.

659
01:38:17,130 --> 01:39:05,838
Kayla: In the 1940s, a man named James Walters became a direct disciple of Yogananda, joining the monastic order and taking on the name. Eventually Kriananda. Yogananda soon granted him the authority to teach Kriya Yoga while with the SRF, and then would eventually appoint him head monk of the Mount Washington SRF headquarters. After Yogananda died, Crea Ananda continued to rise in the ranks of the SRF hierarchy and was eventually appointed to the position of vice president and a member of the board of directors. And then, in 1962, after a pattern of self serving behaviors, quote unquote, the board of directors unanimously voted to oust Kriananda from the organization. Shockingly, Creonanda did not go gentle into that good night, and has since been a thorn in the side of SRFdev, even after his own death in 2013.

660
01:39:05,934 --> 01:39:06,654
Chris: Oh, wow.

661
01:39:06,782 --> 01:39:07,686
Kayla: Qui Ananda claimed.

662
01:39:07,718 --> 01:39:08,726
Chris: Is he haunting them?

663
01:39:08,878 --> 01:39:31,310
Kayla: Yes. It's a ghost story. Kriananda claimed that Yogananda wanted him to start his own organization that would teach Yogananda's teachings, and the Ananda Church of Self realization was formed, amassing its own large following that persists to this day. I will be sure to link to this controversial sect, especially the article they have titled, has srf lost its way?

664
01:39:33,130 --> 01:39:35,954
Chris: Ooh. That's a leading question. Kayla.

665
01:39:36,042 --> 01:39:37,738
Kayla: Chris, how do you feel?

666
01:39:37,874 --> 01:39:41,018
Chris: I feel like maybe they never had their way.

667
01:39:41,114 --> 01:39:47,390
Kayla: That was. That was just a question. Long, strange journey, and I just want to check in with you before we move on to our criteria.

668
01:39:49,050 --> 01:39:53,970
Chris: I feel. I feel fine. Thank you.

669
01:39:54,050 --> 01:39:55,394
Kayla: Good. I'm glad. I'm glad you're okay.

670
01:39:55,442 --> 01:39:56,750
Chris: Yeah, I feel okay.

671
01:39:57,160 --> 01:40:03,456
Kayla: Well, then it's time. That's it. I can't talk about this anymore. We've talked about it into the ground.

672
01:40:03,608 --> 01:40:07,872
Chris: Yeah. I feel like I've absorbed a lot of information. That's how I feel.

673
01:40:08,056 --> 01:40:10,048
Kayla: Let's move on to our criteria.

674
01:40:10,224 --> 01:40:14,192
Chris: All right, let me grab the criteria.

675
01:40:14,256 --> 01:40:15,152
Kayla: That's not them.

676
01:40:15,296 --> 01:40:15,980
Chris: This.

677
01:40:17,040 --> 01:40:19,128
Kayla: That's a piece of paper from another cult went to.

678
01:40:19,184 --> 01:40:24,168
Chris: Okay. But I'm pretending that the criteria paper because I don't feel like digging for it.

679
01:40:24,224 --> 01:40:25,940
Kayla: I don't know what the criteria are.

680
01:40:26,880 --> 01:40:28,472
Chris: Kayla, how long have you been doing this?

681
01:40:28,496 --> 01:40:30,040
Kayla: You can't do it off the table for years.

682
01:40:30,160 --> 01:40:31,152
Chris: Jesus Christ.

683
01:40:31,296 --> 01:40:32,136
Kayla: We're in our third year.

684
01:40:32,168 --> 01:40:33,944
Chris: Tramahansa Yogananda.

685
01:40:34,072 --> 01:40:36,860
Kayla: So, first charismatic leader. Is that present?

686
01:40:38,000 --> 01:40:38,472
Chris: Yeah.

687
01:40:38,536 --> 01:40:40,408
Kayla: Maybe more so than anything else we've talked about.

688
01:40:40,464 --> 01:41:02,164
Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's, like. Actually, there's not only. There's a one. There's, like, a. There's, like, a pantheon of charismatic leaders. You know, there's, like, those six pictures of Prahanasa Yogananda and his chain of gurus that went back and Jesus and Krishna. Yeah. And it sounds like, actually, the diamatra.

689
01:41:02,212 --> 01:41:03,080
Kayla: Is that her name?

690
01:41:04,780 --> 01:41:09,956
Chris: Sounds like there could be, like, a whole episode just on her. Maybe if she's in charge for 55 years.

691
01:41:10,068 --> 01:41:20,910
Kayla: She also. She's quoted in the. In the documentary being like, yeah, Yogananda told me that he was gonna die. And then, like, when he died, I was there and I touched his hand, and I knew, like, oh, yeah, he's not coming back.

692
01:41:21,370 --> 01:41:25,442
Chris: Okay, okay. And. But was part of it, like. And he said that I should be the next.

693
01:41:25,466 --> 01:41:27,538
Kayla: No, because there was somebody else, and then it was her.

694
01:41:27,594 --> 01:41:28,186
Chris: Oh, that's right.

695
01:41:28,218 --> 01:41:33,258
Kayla: But still. Yeah, he did. He died. He died.

696
01:41:33,394 --> 01:41:36,874
Chris: Okay. So. Hi.

697
01:41:37,002 --> 01:41:37,578
Kayla: Hi.

698
01:41:37,714 --> 01:41:38,714
Chris: V. Hi.

699
01:41:38,882 --> 01:41:40,590
Kayla: Percentage of life consumed.

700
01:41:40,930 --> 01:41:56,704
Chris: Okay. I don't know if I have a good sense of this. It seems like if you're a yemenite monastic order, person of a monk. It seems like that could be quite a bit, especially around the time of the convocation. You have to give it. You have to give 18 hours a day to clean all the poop or whatever it is they do.

701
01:41:56,792 --> 01:42:24,406
Kayla: I think that it's a fairly high. For me, I would call it high across the board. I don't get the sense that you can be like that casual of a kriya yoga practitioner. The course you take, the dollar 90 course you take before you can begin the process to be initiated. I think it's a year long process. And then it's like, it just feels like this becomes a bigger part of your life. You know, you're supposed to meditate every day. There's like, you know, prayer circles on.

702
01:42:24,438 --> 01:42:25,910
Chris: Meditate until you don't breathe anymore.

703
01:42:25,950 --> 01:42:32,094
Kayla: Yeah. Like, to me, it feels, you know, people, there's a lot of literature to read. There's a lot of literature to read here.

704
01:42:32,182 --> 01:42:32,510
Chris: Okay.

705
01:42:32,550 --> 01:42:39,838
Kayla: People volunteer. It feels like, for me, if I had to judge, it's a very high percentage of life consumed for everyone who participates.

706
01:42:39,974 --> 01:42:45,680
Chris: Counterpoint, though. We just went to the lake shrine and walked around and it was totally sweet, and then we left.

707
01:42:45,800 --> 01:42:52,824
Kayla: Yeah. But we are not SRF. Like, we're not in the group. It's like saying, I'm a painter because I wouldn't look at a painting.

708
01:42:52,872 --> 01:42:59,688
Chris: Like, I mean, it's a little different than that. But also, I mean, I can paint things. I've painted a thing.

709
01:42:59,744 --> 01:43:03,980
Kayla: Okay. I've gone to church with your family, but I wasn't Catholic doing that.

710
01:43:04,520 --> 01:43:11,208
Chris: Okay, that's a good. That's a good analogy. All right, fair. So I would say then that's a good reason to vote.

711
01:43:11,224 --> 01:43:23,072
Kayla: That also, percentage of life consumed, extremely high. Because all I've done for the last, like, month and a half, maybe longer, is like, learn about SRF because went there, and then all I've done is learn about it.

712
01:43:23,096 --> 01:43:23,984
Chris: Has consumed your life.

713
01:43:24,032 --> 01:43:24,792
Kayla: My life is consumed.

714
01:43:24,816 --> 01:43:30,800
Chris: That's true. Okay. Percentage of Kayla's life consumed, high. All right, next criterion expected harm.

715
01:43:30,960 --> 01:43:33,256
Kayla: I'm doing these from memory, so we're gonna. It's gonna get fucked up.

716
01:43:33,288 --> 01:43:35,168
Chris: You should be able to do them from memory.

717
01:43:35,264 --> 01:43:39,590
Kayla: I can't co host expected harm, I don't think.

718
01:43:39,930 --> 01:43:42,810
Chris: Oh, actually, wait. You can not breathe yourself to brain.

719
01:43:42,850 --> 01:43:55,458
Kayla: Damage if you take some of these things, like not breathing, not eating, not sleeping too much to heart. I think it could damage you if you join the monastic order and are, like, spending 18 hours of your life every day cleaning up after somebody, I think.

720
01:43:55,514 --> 01:43:57,138
Chris: And if there's credibility to some of.

721
01:43:57,154 --> 01:44:01,186
Kayla: The abuse allegations, I would say that this is medium.

722
01:44:01,378 --> 01:44:02,164
Chris: Okay.

723
01:44:02,322 --> 01:44:05,200
Kayla: Because I think you could probably also do it and not be harmed.

724
01:44:05,320 --> 01:44:10,160
Chris: Yeah, I think so. And maybe even lower than medium, because maybe you could do it and be low to medium.

725
01:44:10,200 --> 01:44:11,512
Kayla: Like on the stove.

726
01:44:11,616 --> 01:44:15,520
Chris: Yeah, yeah. It's like a two and a half or a three on the stove.

727
01:44:15,640 --> 01:44:16,152
Kayla: What's the next.

728
01:44:16,176 --> 01:44:18,312
Chris: Can you do a two and a half on the stove or does it click in?

729
01:44:18,416 --> 01:44:19,576
Kayla: I think you go in between.

730
01:44:19,688 --> 01:44:20,096
Chris: Can you?

731
01:44:20,128 --> 01:44:25,344
Kayla: Yeah. At least on ours, it depends on the stove. What's the next criteria? You know, all of them.

732
01:44:25,352 --> 01:44:26,064
Chris: It's your episode.

733
01:44:26,112 --> 01:44:28,468
Kayla: No. What's the next criteria? I really don't know.

734
01:44:28,664 --> 01:44:32,028
Chris: Ritual. Presence of ritual. These actually are hard to do for memory.

735
01:44:32,084 --> 01:44:34,660
Kayla: Do you think the presence of ritual is there?

736
01:44:34,820 --> 01:44:35,532
Chris: Yes.

737
01:44:35,676 --> 01:44:39,840
Kayla: Do you think that there is any sort of ritual going on with this?

738
01:44:40,220 --> 01:44:42,212
Chris: What? Of course. Yes. What are you talking about?

739
01:44:42,276 --> 01:44:43,468
Kayla: I'm making a funny.

740
01:44:43,524 --> 01:44:44,160
Chris: Oh.

741
01:44:44,460 --> 01:44:47,076
Kayla: By acting as if it's not super duper obvious.

742
01:44:47,148 --> 01:44:47,564
Chris: Yeah. No.

743
01:44:47,612 --> 01:44:49,988
Kayla: Presence of ritual is high through the goddang roof.

744
01:44:50,084 --> 01:44:57,196
Chris: Yeah. I almost feel like it would take too long for me to list all the things that you said, you know.

745
01:44:57,268 --> 01:44:59,268
Kayla: And we know that the ritual is.

746
01:44:59,284 --> 01:45:08,096
Chris: High and the vocabulary and the people and the. Those passages that you read that made no goddamn sense and made my brain fall out of my ear.

747
01:45:08,168 --> 01:45:08,820
Kayla: Yeah.

748
01:45:09,120 --> 01:45:13,220
Chris: Okay. The next one is. Is it niche within society?

749
01:45:14,560 --> 01:45:25,100
Kayla: It's like a. Yes and no. It doesn't feel like any more niche than, like. I mean, I don't know. They say they have a presence in 175 countries with, like, 600.

750
01:45:25,400 --> 01:45:27,456
Chris: And also yoga is a big deal now.

751
01:45:27,488 --> 01:45:39,414
Kayla: Yoga is a big deal. The more I've learned about this, the more of a big deal. I mean, Steve Jobs was passing out his books at his own funeral. Autobiography of a yogi has sold millions and millions of copies. It feels.

752
01:45:39,502 --> 01:45:40,182
Chris: So it's not niche.

753
01:45:40,206 --> 01:45:43,054
Kayla: Maybe niche. And then you realize, no, it is not.

754
01:45:43,182 --> 01:45:43,926
Chris: Okay.

755
01:45:44,078 --> 01:45:45,510
Kayla: Okay. So that was five, right?

756
01:45:45,630 --> 01:45:46,118
Chris: Yeah.

757
01:45:46,214 --> 01:45:47,606
Kayla: All right, we got three more.

758
01:45:47,718 --> 01:45:57,386
Chris: Sorry. Actually, I was thinking about this. So if all these other ones hit high, but niche is low, is it a religion? Then it's a religion. Right. Then it's like. Then it's like Zoom.

759
01:45:57,418 --> 01:46:02,030
Kayla: Is that what happened with zumba? Srf and Zumba share a lot of things.

760
01:46:03,370 --> 01:46:26,936
Chris: And then the next one is dogma. Dogmatic. So dogma, again, is not necessarily whether it's right or wrong. And from, like, a factual, reality based standpoint. But whether there's, like, a right or wrong to the group. Right. Whether there's, like, insider. Outsider. And I, you know, is how much you are punished or chastised for seeking.

761
01:46:26,968 --> 01:46:40,192
Kayla: Outside knowledge, it feels like there's not really the punish or chastised for seeking outside knowledge. It feels like maybe there's some inherent, like, mockery. If you try to do another kind of meditation, they're like, ugh, unscientific. But then there's also, ew.

762
01:46:40,216 --> 01:46:43,416
Chris: You do one of those breathing meditations where you breathe like a rube.

763
01:46:43,488 --> 01:46:48,816
Kayla: It kind of, like, presents itself as undogmatic. Like, anyone can do this. We accept all colors, creeds.

764
01:46:48,888 --> 01:46:53,568
Chris: Yeah, but then you have to sign something saying that, like, I can't do it. Choose to not.

765
01:46:53,624 --> 01:47:03,100
Kayla: So I think there's, like, a bit of a. It's like, a bit of a gradient there where it's like, you can participate this in a way that's not dogmatic. But then kind of the more you get into it seems like the more dogmatic it gets.

766
01:47:04,280 --> 01:47:13,568
Chris: I don't know. Yeah, I really feel like a lot of the, like, shitting on other forms of yoga feels like that it's not great. That calls this one.

767
01:47:13,664 --> 01:47:14,432
Kayla: I wasn't a fan.

768
01:47:14,496 --> 01:47:16,496
Chris: That calls this one. I sand dogmatic high.

769
01:47:16,568 --> 01:47:17,608
Kayla: What's the next one?

770
01:47:17,784 --> 01:47:25,366
Chris: And then the next one is. Okay, so no chain of victims, but chain of victims of gurus? Or is there a chain of. Are they recruiting? Do they get people to recruit?

771
01:47:25,478 --> 01:47:33,518
Kayla: I want to say that if there is a chain of victims is different than, like, the very classic MLM style chain of victims, where it's, like, where.

772
01:47:33,534 --> 01:47:35,742
Chris: You lose distinction between victim and perpetrator.

773
01:47:35,806 --> 01:48:02,440
Kayla: Yeah. Especially because the way this is, like, it's not. There's not a lot of, like, I'm a Korea yoga practitioner. I will teach you how to do this method, and then you can teach it to somebody else. And you can teach it to somebody else. And then there's not the, like, the teal swan or the, like, mlm style of, like, I will teach you to do this practice, and then you can go out and teach somebody. And then they can teach somebody that they can teach somebody. It's like, you almost come to me to be taught, and it doesn't seem like there's a lot of, like. And go get three friends to come do it, too.

774
01:48:02,820 --> 01:48:21,912
Kayla: I think there's probably some, like, natural residual, like, if you find this and you love it, that you would want to tell your friends and family about it. But I didn't read a lot of, like, my life is destroyed, and I destroyed, you know, my loved ones lives because of this. I didn't read a lot of, like, my life is destroyed. There's definitely God.

775
01:48:21,936 --> 01:48:26,640
Chris: They destroyed my lives. And then I'm also. I also feel bad about the things that I did when I was there.

776
01:48:26,680 --> 01:48:34,488
Kayla: Yeah. The Scientology stuff, where it's like, I got my family into Scientology, and then I left, and they're still stuck. Like, I didn't read a lot of that. So I want to not. I don't think this would be so low.

777
01:48:34,544 --> 01:48:36,936
Chris: Chain of victims. Low. Chain of gurus. High chain of gurus.

778
01:48:36,968 --> 01:48:38,220
Kayla: Very low. Yeah.

779
01:48:38,720 --> 01:48:40,260
Chris: And then the final one.

780
01:48:42,010 --> 01:48:49,602
Kayla: Because if. If they didn't call it a science, I'd go low. Cause they're just. It's just spiritual. No, they called it a science.

781
01:48:49,666 --> 01:48:51,050
Chris: You metaphorically stop breathing.

782
01:48:51,090 --> 01:48:51,810
Kayla: So they're facts.

783
01:48:51,850 --> 01:48:52,586
Chris: No, you literally.

784
01:48:52,658 --> 01:48:54,754
Kayla: Antifactuality is extraordinarily high with this.

785
01:48:54,802 --> 01:49:03,314
Chris: Yeah, I agree. Once they entered the arena of facts and science of their own accord and have withered under it.

786
01:49:03,402 --> 01:49:03,762
Kayla: Yeah.

787
01:49:03,826 --> 01:49:09,108
Chris: Okay. So I'm gonna say religion. I don't feel comfortable because everything is very high.

788
01:49:09,234 --> 01:49:09,720
Kayla: You know what?

789
01:49:09,760 --> 01:49:36,094
Chris: The only thing that didn't hit high on the criteria was chain of victims and niche. So if you say, okay, if six out of the seven, is it a cult? Slash religion hit high, and then the. You know, the cult religion distinguisher hits relatively high in the side of religion, then it's a religion. I'm sorry, it is. And they were, like, claiming that they weren't. That's bullshit.

790
01:49:36,192 --> 01:49:37,658
Kayla: I mean, if you want to call it a religion.

791
01:49:37,794 --> 01:49:38,874
Chris: I did.

792
01:49:38,962 --> 01:49:46,194
Kayla: Then you're the evaluator here. I'm just the presenter, so I have to better what you say.

793
01:49:46,242 --> 01:49:51,050
Chris: Better. Boom. SRF is a religion. Boom.

794
01:49:51,210 --> 01:49:59,866
Kayla: Mic drop. So that's it for. These two episodes of cult are just weird. But I have a few more thoughts I wanted to muse upon before we officially end.

795
01:49:59,978 --> 01:50:02,924
Chris: Okay, when do I thank you for this journey? I feel like we always say that.

796
01:50:03,002 --> 01:50:03,824
Kayla: You can thank me now.

797
01:50:03,912 --> 01:50:05,648
Chris: Okay. Thank you for this journey, Kayla.

798
01:50:05,704 --> 01:50:06,144
Kayla: You're welcome.

799
01:50:06,192 --> 01:50:07,280
Chris: It's very interesting.

800
01:50:07,400 --> 01:50:45,092
Kayla: And like all good journeys, we're gonna circle back to the beginning. A changed. A changed. A changed man. So let's. Let's circle back to how we started this episode, by talking about science. Clearly, my biggest beef with SRF and Yogananda and Kriya, yoga as a whole is the shady couching of a spiritual practice under the guise of science. And so we've done a lot of debunking and criticizing and, you know, talking about the supernatural claims today. Beefing I just want to be sure that anyone listening to this doesn't come away with the sense that we are anti spirituality here or that we're anti science based spirituality here. In fact, as we have said many times, we are just the opposite.

801
01:50:45,156 --> 01:51:00,854
Kayla: And it is largely why I can get so frustrated by groups that intentionally try to muddy the waters of the inherent spirituality that accompanies a healthy understanding of and respect for the process of science. So I have two Carl Sagan quotes I'd like to read as he speaks for me on this topic better than.

802
01:51:00,902 --> 01:51:03,246
Chris: I can speak for myself and also probably anybody else.

803
01:51:03,318 --> 01:51:53,010
Kayla: Yes, quote science is not only compatible with spirituality, it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature or acts of exemplary selfless courage, such as those of mehandas, Gandhi, or Martin Luther King Junior. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both. And then finally, this quote I dont want to believe. I want to know. This is Kayla and this is Chris. Is cult or just weird.